The Cambridge Handbook of Language in Context 9781108839136, 9781108989275, 9781108984461

Citation preview

The Cambridge Handbook of Language in Context For more than a decade, linguistics has moved increasingly away from evaluating language as an autonomous phenomenon and toward analyzing it “in use,” showing how its function within its social and interactional context plays an important role in shaping its form. Bringing together state-of-the-art research from some of the most influential scholars in linguistics today, this Handbook presents an extensive picture of the study of language as it used “in context” across a number of key linguistic subfields and frameworks. Organized into five thematic parts, the volume covers a range of theoretical perspectives, with each chapter surveying the latest work from areas as diverse as syntax, pragmatics, psycholinguistics, applied linguistics, conversational analysis, multimodality, and computer-mediated communication. Comprehensive, yet wide-ranging, the Handbook provides a full description of how the theory of context has revolutionized linguistics, and how its renewed study is crucial in an ever-changing world. J E S Ú S R O M E R O - T R I L L O is Professor of Pragmatics at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. He is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Corpus Pragmatics, and since 2008 he has edited seven volumes on pragmatics.

Published online by Cambridge University Press

CAMBRIDGE HANDBOOKS IN LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS

Genuinely broad in scope, each handbook in this series provides a complete state-ofthe-field overview of a major sub-discipline within language study and research. Grouped into broad thematic areas, the chapters in each volume encompass the most important issues and topics within each subject, offering a coherent picture of the latest theories and findings. Together, the volumes will build into an integrated overview of the discipline in its entirety.

Published titles The Cambridge Handbook of Phonology, edited by Paul de Lacy The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Code-switching, edited by Barbara E. Bullock and Almeida Jacqueline Toribio The Cambridge Handbook of Child Language, Second Edition, edited by Edith L. Bavin and Letitia Naigles The Cambridge Handbook of Endangered Languages, edited by Peter K. Austin and Julia Sallabank The Cambridge Handbook of Sociolinguistics, edited by Rajend Mesthrie The Cambridge Handbook of Pragmatics, edited by Keith Allan and Kasia M. Jaszczolt The Cambridge Handbook of Language Policy, edited by Bernard Spolsky The Cambridge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition, edited by Julia Herschensohn and Martha Young-Scholten The Cambridge Handbook of Biolinguistics, edited by Cedric Boeckx and Kleanthes K. Grohmann The Cambridge Handbook of Generative Syntax, edited by Marcel den Dikken The Cambridge Handbook of Communication Disorders, edited by Louise Cummings The Cambridge Handbook of Stylistics, edited by Peter Stockwell and Sara Whiteley The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology, edited by N. J. Enfield, Paul Kockelman and Jack Sidnell The Cambridge Handbook of English Corpus Linguistics, edited by Douglas Biber and Randi Reppen The Cambridge Handbook of Bilingual Processing, edited by John W. Schwieter The Cambridge Handbook of Learner Corpus Research, edited by Sylviane Granger, Gaëtanelle Gilquin and Fanny Meunier The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Multicompetence, edited by Li Wei and Vivian Cook The Cambridge Handbook of English Historical Linguistics, edited by Merja Kytö and Päivi Pahta The Cambridge Handbook of Formal Semantics, edited by Maria Aloni and Paul Dekker The Cambridge Handbook of Morphology, edited by Andrew Hippisley and Greg Stump The Cambridge Handbook of Historical Syntax, edited by Adam Ledgeway and Ian Roberts The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Typology, edited by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and R. M. W. Dixon The Cambridge Handbook of Areal Linguistics, edited by Raymond Hickey The Cambridge Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics, edited by Barbara Dancygier The Cambridge Handbook of Japanese Linguistics, edited by Yoko Hasegawa The Cambridge Handbook of Spanish Linguistics, edited by Kimberly L. Geeslin

Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Cambridge Handbook of Bilingualism, edited by Annick De Houwer and Lourdes Ortega The Cambridge Handbook of Systemic Functional Linguistics, edited by Geoff Thompson, Wendy L. Bowcher, Lise Fontaine and David Schönthal The Cambridge Handbook of African Linguistics, edited by H. Ekkehard Wolff The Cambridge Handbook of Language Learning, edited by John W. Schwieter and Alessandro Benati The Cambridge Handbook of World Englishes, edited by Daniel Schreier, Marianne Hundt and Edgar W. Schneider The Cambridge Handbook of Intercultural Communication, edited by Guido Rings and Sebastian Rasinger The Cambridge Handbook of Germanic Linguistics, edited by Michael T. Putnam and B. Richard Page The Cambridge Handbook of Discourse Studies, edited by Anna De Fina and Alexandra Georgakopoulou The Cambridge Handbook of Language Standardization, edited by Wendy AyresBennett and John Bellamy The Cambridge Handbook of Korean Linguistics, edited by Sungdai Cho and John Whitman The Cambridge Handbook of Phonetics, edited by Rachael-Anne Knight and Jane Setter The Cambridge Handbook of Corrective Feedback in Second Language Learning and Teaching, edited by Hossein Nassaji and Eva Kartchava The Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Syntax, edited by Grant Goodall The Cambridge Handbook of Heritage Languages and Linguistics, edited by Silvina Montrul and Maria Polinsky The Cambridge Handbook of Arabic Linguistics, edited by Karin Ryding and David Wilmsen The Cambridge Handbook of the Philosophy of Language, edited by Piotr Stalmaszczyk The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics, edited by Michael Haugh, Dániel Z. Kádár and Marina Terkourafi The Cambridge Handbook of Task-Based Language Teaching, edited by Mohammed Ahmadian and Michael Long The Cambridge Handbook of Language Contact: Population Movement and Language Change, Volume 1, edited by Salikoko Mufwene and Anna Maria Escobar The Cambridge Handbook of Language Contact: Multilingualism in Population Structure, Volume 2, edited by Salikoko Mufwene and Anna Maria Escobar The Cambridge Handbook of Romance Linguistics, edited by Adam Ledgeway and Martin Maiden The Cambridge Handbook of Translation, edited by Kirsten Malmkjær The Cambridge Handbook of Chinese Linguistics, edited by Chu-Ren Huang, YenHwei Lin, I-Hsuan Chen and Yu-Yin Hsu The Cambridge Handbook of Intercultural Pragmatics, edited by Istvan Kecskes The Cambridge Handbook of Role and Reference Grammar, edited by Delia Bentley, Ricardo Mairal-Usón, Wataru Nakamura and Robert D. Van Valin Jr. The Cambridge Handbook of Historical Orthography, edited by Marco Condorelli and Hanna Rutkowska The Cambridge Handbook of Third Language Acquisition, edited by Jennifer Cabrelli, Adel Chaouch-Orozco, Jorge González Alonso, Eloi Puig-Mayenco, Sergio Miguel Pereira Soares and Jason Rothman

Published online by Cambridge University Press

Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Cambridge Handbook of Language in Context Edited by Jesús Romero-Trillo Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

Published online by Cambridge University Press

Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8EA, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 103 Penang Road, #05–06/07, Visioncrest Commercial, Singapore 238467 Cambridge University Press is part of Cambridge University Press & Assessment, a department of the University of Cambridge. We share the University’s mission to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108839136 DOI: 10.1017/9781108989275 © Cambridge University Press & Assessment 2024 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press & Assessment. First published 2024 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Romero-Trillo, Jesús, editor. Title: The Cambridge handbook of language in context / edited by Jesús Romero-Trillo. Description: Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2024. | Series: Cambridge handbooks in language and linguistics | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023029574 | ISBN 9781108839136 (hardback) | ISBN 9781108984461 (paperback) | ISBN 9781108989275 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Context (Linguistics) | LCGFT: Essays. Classification: LCC P325.5.C65 C36 2024 | DDC 401/.43–dc23/eng/20230721 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023029574 ISBN 978-1-108-83913-6 Hardback Cambridge University Press & Assessment has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Published online by Cambridge University Press

Contents

List of Figures List of Tables List of Contributors Acknowledgments Language in Context Studies Jesús Romero-Trillo Part I Language in Context: A Sociohistorical Perspective 1 Conversation Analysis John Heritage 2 Context in Historical Linguistics Elizabeth Traugott 3 Context in Discourse Analysis Cedric Deschrijver and Alexandra Georgakopoulou

page ix x xi xiii 1

9 49 71

Part II Philosophical, Semantic, and Grammatical Approaches to Context 4 Philosophy of Language and Action Theory María de Ponte, Kepa Korta, and John Perry 95 5 A Functional Approach to Context Rebekah Wegener and Lise Fontaine 116 6 The Grammar of Incremental Language Production in Context J. Lachlan Mackenzie 140 7 Cognitive Linguistics and Context Dirk Geeraerts 160 Part III Pragmatic Approaches to Context 8 The Role of Context in Gricean and Neo-Gricean Pragmatics Jacques Moeschler 9 Sociopragmatics and Context Sophia Marmaridou 10 Natural Semantic Metalanguage and Context Anna Gladkova 11 Relevance Theory and Context Deirdre Wilson

Published online by Cambridge University Press

183 205 225 247

viii

Contents

12 The Interplay of Linguistic, Conceptual, and Encyclopedic Knowledge in Meaning Construction and Comprehension Istvan Kecskes 268 13 Corpus Pragmatics Karin Aijmer 289 14 Prosodic Pragmatics in Context Jesús Romero-Trillo and Yalda Sadeghi 314 Part IV Applications of Context Studies 15 Language Learning and Assessment in Context Dale Koike and Elisa Gironzetti 16 Linguistic Creativity and Humor in Context Delia Chiaro 17 Context in Translation and Interpreting Studies Luis Pérez-González 18 The Role of Context in Clinical Linguistics Louise Cummings Part V Advances in Multimodal and Technological Context-Based Research 19 Nonverbal Communication and Context: Multimodality in Interaction Pauline Madella and Tim Wharton 20 AI, Human–Robot Interaction, and Natural Language Processing Ian McLoughlin and Nitin Indurkhya 21 Social Media and Computer-Mediated Communication Francisco Yus Index

Published online by Cambridge University Press

331 353 371 393

419 436 455 477

Figures

2.1 Heine’s (2002) and Diewald’s (2006) models compared (based on Traugott 2012: 230) page 54 2.2 Grammaticization as context expansion (Himmelmann 2004: 33) 55 5.1 A Functional approach to context within a theory of linguistics (adapted from Halliday 2013) 122 5.2 Language and context, system and instance (adapted from Halliday 1991/2007: 275) 124 12.1 Recent linguistic theory of language 269 12.2 Kecskes’ definition of language 269 12.3 Conceptual knowledge and encyclopedic knowledge 277 14.1 The function of Adaptive Context 320 18.1 Communication disorders 397 19.1 Prosodic inputs 423 20.1 High-level diagram of a dialogue system showing major components and context level 438 21.1 Discourse and contexts across the online/offline divide 459 21.2 Personal, interactive, and social contexts on a Facebook profile 462

Published online by Cambridge University Press

Tables

7.1 Fundamental recontextualizing characteristics of Cognitive Linguistics 10.1 Semantic primes, English exponents (after Goddard and Wierzbicka 2014) 11.1 Interpretation of my utterance I have to finish a paper 15.1 Historical overview of the relationship between context and L2 learning

Published online by Cambridge University Press

page 175 227 259 341

Contributors

Aijmer, Karin. University of Gothenburg, Sweden Chiaro, Delia. University of Bologna, Italy Cummings, Louise. The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong De Ponte, María. University of the Basque Country, Spain Deschrijver, Cedric. Ming Chuan University, Taiwan Fontaine, Lise. Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Canada Geeraerts, Dirk. University of Leuven, Belgium Georgakopoulou, Alexandra. King’s College London, UK Gironzetti, Elisa. University of Maryland, USA Gladkova, Anna. Australian National University, Australia Heritage, John. UCLA, USA Indurkhya, Nitin. Singapore Institute of Technology, Singapore Kecskes, Istvan. State University of New York, Albany, USA Koike, Dale. University of Texas at Austin, USA Korta, Kepa. University of the Basque Country, Spain Mackenzie, J. Lachlan. CELGA-ILTEC, University of Coimbra, Portugal Madella, Pauline. University of Bedfordshire, UK Marmaridou, Sophia. National and Kapodistrian University, Greece McLoughlin, Ian. Singapore Institute of Technology, Singapore Moeschler, Jacques. University of Geneva, Switzerland Pérez-González, Luis. University of Agder, Norway Perry, John. Stanford University and UC Riverside, USA Romero-Trillo, Jesús. Autónoma University of Madrid, Spain Sadeghi, Yalda. CU Escuni, Spain

Published online by Cambridge University Press

xii

List of Contributors

Traugott, Elizabeth. Stanford University, USA Wegener, Rebekah. Paris Lodron Universität Salzburg, Austria Wharton, Tim. University of Brighton, UK Wilson, Deirdre. University College London, UK Yus, Francisco. University of Alicante, Spain

Published online by Cambridge University Press

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, I want to thank my colleague Dr. Yalda Sadeghi for her excellent job as an editorial assistant. Her meticulous work has been fundamental during the compilation and production stages of the volume. I am also grateful to the reviewers of the chapters. Their comments have helped the authors to write excellent contributions to The Cambridge Handbook of Language in Context.

Published online by Cambridge University Press

Published online by Cambridge University Press

Language in Context Studies Jesús Romero-Trillo

The Purpose of the Volume Context is everywhere. Context is everything. Context is whatever contributes, consciously or unconsciously, to the understanding of reality to facilitate language processing in human interaction. We continuously construct and constrain context in our minds to understand and be understood. The Cambridge Handbook of Language in Context describes how context interacts with language across different traditions and theories, and the chapters in the volume will answer some critical questions in context studies that have been puzzling linguists and scholars from other related fields, such as how much context goes into a specific linguistic model or what facets of contextual information are indispensable in a specific theory. To answer some of these burning questions, the volume brings together some of the most influential scholars in linguistics and provides a comprehensive guide to language in context from a multifaceted perspective. For this reason, the present Handbook does not consider context as an ancillary feature for the interpretation of language, as was sometimes invoked in the past, but makes context the focal point to highlight its essential dynamic role for the interpretation of reality. Linguistics describes language and its users from various viewpoints: interactional, textual, historical, cognitive, etc., so this volume departs from the various theories that describe these perspectives to find the emergent aspects that can illuminate a renovated description of the whole, that is, of context. In this sense, the contributors to the volume have made a creative tour de force in their reflection of how context can sharpen the theories they are describing vis-à-vis the recent developments in linguistics and other fields such as technology, philosophy or psychology, amongst others. Context can be described in the digital era as the sum of the linguistic, physical, psychological, and technological factors that influence humans in their interpretation of reality, being aware that the addition of all these factors

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press

2

JESÚS ROMERO-TRILLO

amounts to a more complex result than the mere sum of its parts. The understanding of communication has broadened thanks to the ubiquity of the Internet and the pervasiveness of social media. Technology has changed face-to-face communication irreversibly. Nowadays, access to global information is available with our smartphones within seconds, and conversations no longer rely uniquely on the knowledge of the interlocutors but on the verdict of the web. Context has a polyhedric perspective, and the chapters in the volume weave a crisscrossing safety net that describes context as the background scenario of any communicative exchange without searching for a consensus between the different approaches. Like a mosaic, only the individual tiles can render the whole picture intelligible. For this reason, the Handbook pays attention to the evolution of context throughout history and identifies the various conceptualizations behind each theory to specify their differences, similarities, and complementary views. The chapters in this volume essentialy align with two main traditions: The first has a cognitive foundation and maintains that context is related to the information processing that allows humans to understand reality. The second has a sociological anchor and focuses on the analysis of the elements that allow speakers to engage in the co-construction of conversation as the essence of society. Ultimately, the objective of The Cambridge Handbook of Language in Context is to (re)propose context studies in linguistic communication following the same principle as the negative in analogic photography: most of the image space is occupied by the background and this context is essential to put the focus on the silhouettes. The volume is organized into five topical sections. Part I is entitled “Language in Context: A Sociohistorical Perspective.” In Chapter 1, John Heritage describes the historical development of Conversational Analysis and how the discipline revolutionized linguistics and sociology with its novel principles and methods. The author gives a detailed account of the discipline and its anchor to context. Chapter 2, “Context in Historical Linguistics” by Elizabeth Traugott, investigates the contexts that are most relevant to language change, with particular attention to the contextual changes that enable change and those that follow from change. The author highlights some of the key phenomena in the field: grammaticalization, semantic/pragmatic change, and constructionalization. The last chapter of Part I, “Context in Discourse Analysis” by Cedric Deschrijver and Alexandra Georgakopoulou, provides an overview of the main theoretical concepts and empirical tools used to investigate context in Discourse Analysis and focuses mainly on the most significant text-based conceptualizations of context: context as dynamically evolving, context as interactionally achieved, and context as productive and constitutive of speakers’ positions. Part II describes the philosophical, semantic, and grammatical foundations of context studies. It starts with the chapter by María de Ponte, Kepa Korta, and John Perry entitled “Philosophy of Language and Action Theory.” The

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Language in Context Studies

authors reflect on the transition in philosophy of language when scholars started to think about natural languages as opposed to what were called “perfect languages” – giving a detailed account of this change of paradigm, present action theory, and its tenets in context studies. In Chapter 5, Rebekah Wegener and Lise Fontaine describe the functional approach to context and its enormous impact on context studies. They mainly focus on the Systemic Functional Linguistics framework and explore its main parameters as a comprehensive theory of language, giving an account of the historical development compared with other related functional grammars. Chapter 6, “The Grammar of Incremental Language Production in Context” by J. Lachlan Mackenzie, describes the incrementalist approach, which considers how an utterance reflects the language user’s communicative needs and the specific context. The contribution describes the way in which incremental grammars interact with psycholinguistics to demonstrate how multisensory situational contexts are integrated into the speaker’s processing strategies. In Chapter 7 Dirk Geeraerts presents the role of context in Cognitive Linguistics by giving a complete overview of this theoretical approach to context. His main argument is that even if (re)contextualization provides a unifying perspective on the contribution of Cognitive Linguistics, it lacks a unifying perspective based on two main approaches: a universalist tendency under the assumption that the human body is the same for everyone and a sociocultural conception emphasizing the diversity and historicity of the human experience. Part III of the Handbook revises the main pragmatic theories and their understanding of context. In Chapter 8, “The Role of Context in Gricean and Neo-Gricean Pragmatics,” Jacques Moeschler gives a full account of the role of context in the processing of meaning by making the distinction between particularized and conventional pragmatic implicatures in Gricean and postGricean pragmatics. He advocates that context is the last resort for computing conversational implicatures. Chapter 9, by Sophia Marmaridou, approaches the relationship between sociopragmatics and context. Her contribution describes pragmatic meaning as the tool to assess participants’ social distance, the language community’s social rules and appropriateness norms, the discourse practices, and the accepted behaviors. The author incorporates in her description some of the main domains of analysis within this field in their understanding of context and compares the research angle with other pragmatic approaches, like pragmalinguistics. Anna Gladkova outlines, in Chapter 10, the understanding of context within the Natural Semantic Metalanguage, described by the authors as a humanspecific symbolic system for expressing meaning. In their approach, context includes the syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations of a word and the social and cultural contexts it functions in, therefore providing a holistic approach to meaning.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press

3

4

JESÚS ROMERO-TRILLO

In Chapter 11 Deirdre Wilson examines the relation between context and Relevance Theory and reflects upon the crucial, yet controversial, concept of context due to its importance in the different approaches to linguistics. However, she attributes the lack of a shared theory not only to the linguists’ diverging understandings but also to the fact that there seem to be no limitations to the contextual information that can be triggered in understanding utterances. In her opinion, the question at stake for relevance theory is how hearers can find the necessary contextual information and succeed in recognizing the speaker’s informative intention. In Chapter 12, “The Interplay of Linguistic, Conceptual, and Encyclopedic Knowledge in Meaning Construction and Comprehension,” Istvan Kecskes describes how these three components of meaning collaborate with each other. To delve into this proposal, the author suggests analyzing communication from an intercultural perspective as, even if it is the case that linguistic knowledge is relatively easy to encode across languages, they present essential differences in terms of their cultural approach to very similar concepts. Chapter 13, “Corpus Pragmatics” by Karin Aijmer, describes this recent discipline as a combination of the methodology of corpus linguistics and pragmatics as a window to human thought. For the author, corpus linguistics provides the content matter and pragmatics of its explanation. Although corpus pragmatics is still a novel discipline, it is already achieving great insights into new ways of exploring language use and linguistic theory, with promising implications in some new directions, including variation and change and cultural studies. The last chapter of Part III, “Prosodic Pragmatics in Context” by Jesús Romero-Trillo and Yalda Sadeghi, explains that the relationship between context and prosody is very intuitive but, at the same time, extremely challenging to delineate because it is based on acoustic cues that last milliseconds. However, the liaison between prosody and context is so strong that speakers of a language can understand their interlocutors’ emotional and cognitive status through their prosodic realization. The chapter describes the theory of prosody in the light of pragmatics and context, with special reference to how speakers and hearers use suprasegmental information to encode and decode a message respectively and take full notice of speakers’ intentions. Part IV of the Handbook deals with the applications of context studies. In Chapter 15, “Language Learning and Assessment in Context,” Dale Koike and Elisa Gironzetti discuss some of the most significant historical, methodological, and social issues in context and language learning and assessment in first, second, and heritage languages, making an accurate dissection of how context influences learning and assessment in such different social and linguistic domains. Linguistic creativity and humor in context is the topic of Delia Chiaro’s contribution in Chapter 16, in which she underlines the awareness of context for creating and understanding humor. For the author, although humor is primarily dependent on language to be recognized in its intentionality, it is also

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Language in Context Studies

heavily context-dependent, with interesting side implications regarding the recipient’s sense of humor and the moral attachment to the object of our humor. Chapter 17, Luis Pérez-González’s contribution, explores how scholarly thinking on context has informed research in translation and interpreting studies since the early 1990s to proceed to a critique of different approaches on context in translation scholarship. In his view, although there is a widely accepted premise that translators and interpreters are fully immersed in crosslinguistic and cross-cultural contexts, the theoretical construct of the concept has not been systematically approached by translation and interpreting theories until relatively recently. The last chapter of Part IV, “The Role of Context in Clinical Linguistics” by Louise Cummings, examines how clinical linguistics intersects with context. The author’s main focus in the chapter is to show that for people with language disorders, context can be both a barrier to communication but also a powerful resource for the compensation of impaired language skills. The author concentrates on five context-based themes: the nonnormative use of context in children and adults with language disorders; context as a barrier to, and facilitator of, linguistic communication; the role of context in the language disorders clinic; context and the ecological validity of language assessments; and context in the setting of therapy goals and the generalization of language skills. Part V of the volume presents relevant advances in multimodal and technological context-based research. In Chapter 19, “Nonverbal Communication and Context: Multimodality in Interaction,” Pauline Madella and Tim Wharton advocate for the joint vocal-cum-visual approach to linguistic analysis to understand human linguistic behavior, which sometimes expresses more about the emotional state of our interlocutor than the words pronounced. For this reason, nonverbal modalities cannot be ignored, as our word melodies and gestures are essential to guide the hearer to our intended meanings. In Chapter 20, “AI, Human–Robot Interaction, and Natural Language Processing,” Ian McLoughlin and Nitin Indurkhya describe the structure and processes of an AI-driven speech or dialogue system. Following the three stages of the process: speech processing (phonetic level), natural language processing (lexis, grammar, and syntax), and dialogue processing, the authors analyze the implications within the three related layers of context that they describe to reach the highest level of conversation and topic complexity. The authors hypothesize on the conditions for the future arrival of a pragmatic context level in which beliefs, desires, and intentions could also be processed. Chapter 21, the last chapter of the volume, is entitled “Social Media and Computer-Mediated Communication.” For the author, Francisco Yus, context in cyberpragmatic communication is the information that is brought when the coded input reaches some interpretations. As in other contextualization models, the mind must select the appropriate information for meaningful

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press

5

6

JESÚS ROMERO-TRILLO

interpretations. Bearing this in mind, the author describes the challenges for social media and internet communication in online contexts, like the relationship between an interface and utterance contextualization, the role of the physical–virtual interface, also the differentiation between the user’s personal, interactive, and social non-virtual contexts. As readers can observe, The Cambridge Handbook of Language in Context presents a comprehensive description of how the theory of context has evolved in the history of linguistics and how its renewed study is crucial in an everchanging world. I am grateful to the authors for their insightful contributions and to Cambridge University Press for accepting the challenge of publishing the volume. I am sure that The Cambridge Handbook of Language in Context can suggest guidelines and be of assistance to future linguistic research in the (re)creation of context studies.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Published online by Cambridge University Press

1 Conversation Analysis John Heritage

1.1 Introduction In 1964 Harvey Sacks (1935–1975) began giving lectures on conversation at UCLA and circulated them privately on request, in the process creating his “most successful and prolific form of scientific communication” (Schegloff 1992a: xix). The time was a propitious one for innovation in the human sciences. Human cognition and reasoning had been recently rehabilitated as respectable topics of academic study, having been banished for the previous forty years as subjective and unobservable by the now-waning edict of logical positivism and behaviorism. In psychology, pioneering work by Jerome Bruner (Bruner et al. 1956) and George Miller (Miller et al. 1960) led the way and, in linguistics, the behaviorism that had held sway since the days of Leonard Bloomfield was destroyed in Chomsky’s (1959) devastating review of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior. In anthropology, ethnological research on nonWestern classification systems began to expand (Conklin 1959; Frake 1961), while in sociology there arose a widespread research program premised on the social construction of reality (Schütz 1962; Berger and Luckmann 1967; Holzner 1968). Finally, strongly influenced by the approach to communication that focused on context analysis (McQuown 1971; Leeds-Hurwitz 1987; Kendon 1990), Goffman’s research into the interaction order (1955, 1956) was a major influence on Sacks and his colleagues (Schegloff 1992a; Clayman et al. 2022). The philosophical research associated with these movements, particularly the work of Alfred Schütz (1962) and Ludwig Wittgenstein (1958), made it clear that the human sciences had a range of difficult issues to confront. These may be summarized as follows: First, social actions are meaningful and involve meaning-making. Second, this is achieved through a combination of the content of actions and their contexts. Third, action involves shared or intersubjective meanings that may be far from perfect but are normally enough to allow the participants to carry on. Finally, as Schegloff (1988: 442) observed,

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

10

JOHN HERITAGE

“social life is lived in single occurrences.” Because they embody unique and singular conjunctions of content and context, actions are themselves unique and singular. While possessed of general and generalizable characteristics, these contents and contexts nonetheless intersect in mutually elaborative synergies to enable meanings that are also particular (Garfinkel 1967: 76– 103; Garfinkel and Sacks 1970). The consensus among those who were determined to study social interaction – in particular, Harold Garfinkel (1952, 1967) and Erving Goffman (1955, 1964, 1967, 1983) – was that none of these problems could be analyzed by appealing to psychological processes or other essentially private states of mind. Rather, the task was to focus on the surface of action – the visible order of society (Livingston 2008) – since it is in public action and public communication that meaning-making and comprehension are managed. Within the emerging Conversation Analysis (henceforth CA) paradigm, the focus was not on the “propositions” of positivistic philosophy, nor on the “messages” of communication science, nor yet again on the “meanings” that might emerge from cultural analysis. Rather CA was premised on the notion that, so far as human interaction is concerned, the job of speech is to deliver actions. For example, if A tells B that “Someone just vandalized my car” (Wilson 1991), B has the task of determining whether this statement is intended as a complaint, a request for help, or as an excuse (for a late or nonarrival). This task is of pressing significance because B must frame a response to this information then and there, and this response (for example, an offer of assistance, or an expression of sympathy, or of forgiveness) will unavoidably portray B’s analysis of the action that A’s utterance implemented. It follows that conversational participants have an urgent and compelling interest in the performance and analysis of social actions, and this in turn mandates the corresponding CA focus on action and sequence organization (Schegloff and Sacks 1973; Sacks 1987; 1992). The leading idea that dominated the early development of CA, as well as its subsequent evolution, was Garfinkel’s (1967) notion that social action is methodical, that is, organized by reference to shared methods of acting and reasoning about action that are the fundamental resources for meaningmaking. Moreover, the same methods are deployed both in producing recognizable actions and in recognizing them. As Sacks put it: “A culture is an apparatus for generating recognizable actions; if the same procedures are used for generating as for detecting, that is perhaps as simple a solution to the problem of recognizability as is formulatable” (Sacks Lectures, Fall 1965, Appendix A, p. 226, emphasis in original). The program of research should, accordingly, center on the methods for producing and recognizing action, with these methods construed as a structured set that, like language itself, functions in broad independence from personal sentiments and proclivities. With these insights in hand, CA thinking slowly developed toward the kind of research that we witness today (Clayman et al. 1922). At first, the going was very slow. By the time of Sacks’s death in 1975 in an automobile accident,

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

1 Conversation Analysis

fewer than twenty CA papers had been published. Starting in the 1980s, the field began to grow and by 2020 the number of publications per annum had increased approximately fortyfold. Starting from an exclusively anglophone base, CA methods have come increasingly to be applied across a broad range of languages.1 This growth has also been associated with an institutionalization of the field together with the broadening of CA’s disciplinary context (Stivers and Sidnell 2013). Initially motivated by fundamental sociological concerns with the analysis of social action and intersubjective understanding bequeathed by Schütz (1962), CA rapidly found an audience within the field of discursive psychology (Potter and Wetherell 1987) and now forms the basis of the more recently founded field of interactional linguistics (Couper-Kuhlen and Selting 2018). It also intersects with a variety of other fields, including computer science and neuroscience, and has a very wide range of applications in the fields of medicine, education, law enforcement, media analysis, second language acquisition, and research into disabilities involving autism, stroke, neuro-degenerative illness, and other forms of brain damage.

1.2 A Revolution in Methods A field that started with the preoccupations of CA – a focus on social action, the achievement of intersubjectivity, and the lodging of both in an ever-shifting envelope of context – could hardly proceed using the older methods of discourse analysis. Speech act theory, with its invention of single sentence examples, devoid of any real context save that stipulated by the theorist, coupled with a top-down analytic process conceived in terms of rules and conditions, was already foundering as an approach to action and proved to be largely without merit as an approach to discourse (Levinson 1981, 1983, 2013, 2017). From the outset, Sacks argued that research based on imagined sentences and hypothesized contexts was essentially constrained by what audiences would accept as “reasonable” (1984: 25). Moreover, these imagined scenes would lack the detail and complexity of the real world of action. Indeed, as he put it, from “close looking at the world we can find things that we could not, by imagination, assert were there. We would not know that they were ‘typical’ . . . Indeed, we might not have noticed that they happen” (p. 25). As Sacks’s reference to “close looking” suggests, he adopted the stance of a naturalist going into the field, and finding and describing elements of social actions and observing their “habitats,” the contexts in which they appeared. Recordings enabled him to study them repeatedly and to allow interactional 1

As summarized in Clift and Raymond (2018), these embrace a wide variety of typologically distinct languages: ǂAkhoe Haiǀǀom, Arabic, LSA (Argentinian Sign Language), Bequian Creole, Bikol, Cebuano, Cha’palaa, Chintang, Danish, Duna, Dutch, Finnish, French, Garrwa, German, Guyanese Creole, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ilokano, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Kri, Lahu, Lao, Mandarin, Murrinh-Patha, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Quiche, Russian, Siwu, Spanish, Thai, Tsou, Tzeltal, Tzotzil, Yélî Dnye, Yucatecaya, and Yurakaré.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

11

12

JOHN HERITAGE

materials to be examined in concert with others. A vital result was “that anyone else can go and see whether what was said is so. And that is a tremendous control on seeing whether one is learning anything” (1984: 25). The tenor of Sacks’s comments on methods here, made at the inception of CA, is very much that of an explorer who does not know what is out there to be found. Accordingly, Sacks was generally opposed to the use of methods including coding, experimental procedures, role playing, etc. (cf. Heritage and Atkinson 1984) that would involve top-down generalization or would otherwise presuppose what is likely to be found. Such methods have the potential to obscure the particularity, precision, and underlying organization of observable human conduct. This stance remains a fundamental one within CA, though the increasing expansion of CA findings has more recently eventuated in the use of statistical, experimental, and neuroscience methods as adjuncts to CA investigations (see Robinson et al. 2022).

1.3 The Basic Structure of CA Research At the present time, CA research may be characterized in terms of three levels of analysis.

1.3.1 Sequence The most fundamental of these levels is that of sequence. All actions are built by reference to some “place” in talk and exploit this positioning as a sense-making resource (Schegloff 1984). Moreover, a current action will normally “project” the relevance of some next action, albeit with different degrees of constraint on what should be done next (see below). Combining these two points we may say that each action is context shaped and context renewing (Heritage 1984a: 242). In addition, each next action will normally display some analysis of what has just been said. (1) below is taken from the opening of a conversation between a community nurse (HV) and a new mother, at the mother’s home. The baby is chewing on something: (1) [HV:4A1:1] ((HV: health visitor; M: Mother and F: Father)) 1 HV: He’s enjoying that [isn’t he. 2 F: [°Yes, he certainly is=° 3 M: =He’s not hungry ’cuz (h)he’s ju(h)st (h)had 4 ’iz bo:ttle .hhh 5 (0.5) 6 HV: You’re feeding him on (.) Cow and Gate Premium.=

Here the HV’s apparently casual observation about the baby at line 1 is treated in distinctive ways by the child’s father and mother. The father treats it as something to be agreed with, which he does promptly at line 2. The mother’s

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

1 Conversation Analysis

response, however, is notably defensive. She is at pains to claim that her baby’s behavior is not due to hunger (lines 3–4), and in this way treats the HV’s observation as potentially critical of her parenting. These two different responses likely reflect the division of labor in the household, at least as far as childcare is concerned. It is in these responses, that preceding speakers can see how they were understood and can respond by validating or correcting the understandings displayed in second turns. It follows that, as we shall see, sequences are also a fundamental vehicle for the management of intersubjective understanding between interactants.

1.3.2 Practices The actions that make up sequences are the objects of numerous practices of turn construction (Drew 2013). To be successfully identified, these practices will normally be (a) recurrent, (b) specifically situated within a turn or sequence, and (c) differentiate the turn from one that is comparable but does not embody the practice in question. Here are some examples: (i) prefacing a turn with an address term, which selects a next speaker to speak next: (2) A: John, do you want another drink?

In this case, the address term selects John as the recipient of the offer. (ii) prefacing a turn with the word well, projecting a turn that will be expanded to more than one unit of talk (Heritage 2015), and that will likely be negatively valenced (Davidson 1984; Heritage 2015; Kendrick and Torreira 2015). In (3) Edgerton is offering to help a family stricken with an injury: (3) [Heritage:0II:4:11–19] 1 Edg: =Oh:hh Lord.< And we were wondering if there’s anything 2 we can do to help< 3 Mic: [Well that’s] 4 Edg: [I mean ] can we do any shopping for her or 5 something like tha:t? 6 (0.7) 7 Mic: Well that’s most ki:nd Edgerton .hhh At the moment 8 no:. Because we’ve still got two bo:ys at home. 9 Edg: Of course.

After receiving the offer to help with the shopping (line 4), Michael begins his response with well at line 7. His response comprises two turn constructional units: an appreciation preceded by well, and a rejection of the offer accompanied by an account. The conjunction here between negative valence and turn expansion is scarcely accidental. In fact, the well preface is critical because, without it, that’s most kind might have been understood as an acceptance of the offer, rather

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

13

14

JOHN HERITAGE

than as an appreciation headed toward rejection. Here the well preface instructs the recipient that there will likely be more to come (Heritage 2015) (iii) Incorporating the word any into a polar (yes/no) question. (4) [Heritage 2010] 1 Doc: Do you have any drug aller:gies?

This communicates the questioner’s expectation that the response to the question is likely to be negative (Heritage et al. 2007) and is therefore an aspect of the epistemic stance of the questioner (Heritage and Raymond 2021). As previously noted, practices must be identified as recurrent and as specifically situated. This kind of identification is essential for analysis. For example, the import of practices such as well-prefacing shifts with respect to the word’s placement both within a turn (Lerner and Kitzinger 2019), and within a sequence (Heritage 2015, 2018).

1.3.3 Organizations of Practices Conversation Analysis is founded on Goffman’s (1955, 1964, 1967, 1983) notion that social interaction comprises an institutional order in its own right, and one that is embedded in a wide variety of other social institutions, while structuring participation within them. As an institution, social interaction has its own internal organization and, as Schegloff (2006: 71) notes, “where stable talk in interaction is sustained, solutions to key organizational problems are in operation, and . . . organizations of practice are the basis for these solutions.” Collections of practices are readily found in relation to a range of systemic organizational problems in interaction, all of which are putatively universal (Schegloff 2006). These include the following: (i) Turn-taking: General resources are available to solve questions concerning who should talk next, and when they should do so. These embrace practices for the construction of units of talk (turn constructional units) and projecting their conclusion, for their one-at-a-time allocation, and for allocating next turns to next speakers. These were described in Sacks et al.’s (1974) foundational paper on the topic and have been greatly elaborated in subsequent decades. Recent comparative research strongly suggests that the issues raised by the Sacks et al. study have universal relevance across languages (Stivers et al. 2009). (ii) Sequence organization: This will be elaborated in more detail later in this chapter, but the sequence organizational problem concerns the resources and constraints through which turns at talk are lined up into coherent trajectories of interaction. Although many of the practices involved are specific to particular kinds of actions and sequences, the generic notion of paired actions has been a central resource for understanding how

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

1 Conversation Analysis

(iii)

(iv)

(v)

(vi)

sequences work and is also likely to be a conversational universal (Kendrick et al. 2020). Repair: Interaction can run awry when failures of speaking, hearing, and understanding undermine the mutual intelligibility on which it is based. The organization of practices for dealing with such problems is described under the heading of “repair.” Once again, the basic elements were sketched out by Schegloff et al. (1977) with an important addendum by Schegloff (1992b), and this analysis has undergone considerable refinement in the intervening years. Again, many of the basic principles of repair organization are highly general, if not universal (Dingemanse et al. 2015) Social solidarity: If the first three levels of organization are addressed to the coherent management of interaction itself, the following groups of interactional practices are concerned with the management of the relations between speakers. In the case of social solidarity, these practices are focused on the limitation of conflict and the avoidance of its escalation. Here the organization of “preference” (Pomerantz 1984; Sacks 1987; Schegloff 2007: 58–97; Pomerantz and Heritage 2013; Pillet-Shore 2017) mandating the (delayed) timing and (mitigated) expression of disaffiliative actions is central (see below). Knowledge management: Different speakers bring distinctive kinds of knowledge to bear in the course of their interactional engagements. A wide variety of interactional practices inform the expression of this knowledge: these practices concern its novelty, how the speaker knows it, and whether the speaker has primacy in access to it (Heritage and Raymond 2005). Deontic rights: speakers may vary in their deontic rights: the right to issue directives to others or to require actions from them (Stevanovic and Peräkylä 2012). A range of practices are associated with the management of these rights and with the concrete expression of directives under different circumstances (Stevanovic and Svennevig 2015).

If these six domains of interaction have attracted a good deal of research, there are others that are also managed through clusters of practices. These include references to persons and places, gaze and body behavior, the expression of emotion, storytelling and many more.

1.4 Major Concepts in Conversation Analysis 1.4.1 Sequence Unquestionably, the fundamental and animating concept in CA is that of sequence. Every action (including the first) will necessarily occur at some “place” in an interaction and its content will unavoidably be produced and understood by reference to that place. This means that the most fundamental context in which an action, housed in a turn at talk and/or bodily behavior, will

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

15

16

JOHN HERITAGE

be understood is the immediately preceding turn. It is sequences of action which serve as the medium through which every other aspect of context – both local and distal, social and psychological – emerge at the surface of social interaction (Schegloff 1987, 1991, 1992c). It cannot be sufficiently stressed that, for CA, sequence is the engine room of interaction, and it is the vehicle through which other elements of context such as social identities and social institutions are realized (Heritage and Clayman 2010). Accordingly, very many resources are deployed in the management of sequential coherence, including the “fitting” of elementary actions to one another (Schegloff and Sacks 1973), the management of coherence and cohesion across turns (Halliday and Hasan 1976), and the use of a variety of particles such as oh, well, and by the way to fine tune the relationship between a current turn and its immediately preceding one (Schiffrin 1987; Fischer 2006; Heritage and Sorjonen 2018). The initial work on sequences was focused on adjacency pairs: actions tightly organized as first pair parts and second pair parts in which the production of a first part strongly obligates a second speaker to produce a second “next” (Schegloff 1972; 2007: 13–27; Schegloff and Sacks 1973). Greetings, “goodbyes,” and question–answer pairs are paradigmatic examples. This apparently simple conceptualization has far-reaching implications. The normative requirement for a fitted second pair part to occur “next” creates a context in which failures to respond appropriately become “noticeable absences,” which in turn can be sanctioned by a first pair part producer who may repeat the first pair part in the hope of response, or complain about the absence. Negative inferences may also be drawn from absent second pair parts: the absence may be attributed to inattention, rudeness, hostility, or an unwillingness to respond due, for example, to a desire to avoid self-incrimination.2 The close-ordering constraint characteristic of adjacency pairs is associated with both the aim of “getting things to happen” in interaction, and processes of understanding that are associated with this. As Schegloff and Sacks (1973: 297–298) summarized the point: by an adjacently positioned second, a speaker can show that he understood what a prior aimed at, and that he is willing to go along with that. Also, by virtue of the occurrence of an adjacently produced second, the doer of a first can see that what he intended was indeed understood, and that it was or was not accepted. Also, of course, a second can assert his failure to understand, or disagreement, and inspection of a second by a first can allow the first speaker to see that while the second thought he understood, indeed he misunderstood. It is then through the use of adjacent positioning that appreciations, failures, corrections, etcetera can be themselves understandably attempted.

2

A variety of countries, including the United States, have laws enabling witnesses to refuse responses to questions without a lawyer present, and without this refusal being admissible as (potentially incriminating) evidence in court.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

1 Conversation Analysis

It is these functions that also necessitate the close ordering of adjacency pair parts. Again Schegloff and Sacks (1973: 297) pinpoint the fundamental issue: Given the utterance-by-utterance organization of turn-taking, unless close ordering is attempted there can be no methodic assurance that a more or less eventually aimed-for successive utterance or utterance type will ever be produced. If a next speaker does not do it, that speaker may provide for a further next that should not do it (or should do something that is not it); and, if what follows that next is “free” and does not do the originally aimedfor utterance, it (i.e., the utterance placed there) may provide for a yet further next that does not do it, etc. Close ordering is, then, the basic generalized means for assuring that some desired event will ever happen. If it cannot be made to happen next, its happening is not merely delayed, but may never come about. The adjacency pair technique, in providing a determinate “when” for it to happen, i.e., “next,” has then means for handling the close order problem, where that problem has its import, through its control of the assurance that some relevant event will be made to occur.

These observations further suggest a second vital dimension of close ordering and sequence in general. This concerns the use of sequential organization in the management of intersubjectivity, to which we now turn. 1.4.1.1 Sequence Organization and Intersubjectivity More or less explicit in the preceding discussion is the idea that sequence organization is a vehicle for the management of mutual understanding and social accountability. Central to this process is what may be termed the “three-step model of intersubjectivity” (Heritage 1984a: 254–264; 2022). This is based on the following two notions: (i) a second turn response to a prior turn communicates, if only indirectly and inferentially, a treatment of the prior action that allows a first speaker to see whether (or how) they were understood; and (ii) a third turn from the first speaker is necessary for the second speaker to see whether the understanding conveyed in Turn 2 was appropriate. “Turn 3” is thus the point at which an intersubjectively shared understanding of “Turn 1” is first available and, just as important, is known to be shared and accountably so by the participants (Heritage 1984a; Schegloff 1992b). It follows that each and every next turn at talk is subject to this three-step consolidation of understanding. Thus, rather like a tracked vehicle, an ongoing process of intersubjective consolidation – an incarnate “running index” (Heritage 1988) of the state of the talk – is continuously and unavoidably extruded through successive turns at talk. An important consequence of this line of reasoning is that intersubjective understanding is neither an exclusively subjective, nor an instantaneous event. Rather, it is a social process unfolding across multiple turns at talk.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

17

18

JOHN HERITAGE

However, “intersubjective understanding” is not the explicit project of sequences. Rather, the actions that compose sequences are accountable in their own right as actions and as competent understandings of what has gone before. In this context then, every turn simultaneously embodies both an understanding of the prior turn and constitutes an action in its own right. This double role for turns at talk is nicely illustrated in (5) below. Here Marty approaches Loes, who is at a desk, with a request (line 1): (5) [Schegloff 1992b: 1321) 1 Marty: Loes, do you have a calendar, 2 Loes: Yeah ((reaches for her desk calendar)) 3 Marty: Do you have one that hangs on the wall? 4 Loes: Oh, you want one. 5 Marty: Yeah

Loes’s responsive action (line 2) is interdicted by Marty’s second request (line 3), at which point Loes, at line 4, articulates the understanding that Marty wants to have a calendar to take away, rather than merely to consult one. This “display of understanding” simultaneously conveys a revised understanding of line 1, while also covertly accounting for the previous misunderstanding. Accountability in the two fundamental senses of understanding and action are seamlessly interwoven here. Adjacency pair sequences can be expanded. These expansions can precede the adjacency pair proper (pre-expansions) and in this position are frequently used to establish the appropriateness of the “base” adjacency pair sequence (Schegloff 2007: 28–57). Insert expansions, occurring between a first pair part and a second, are mainly occupied with initiating repair on the first pair part or establishing conditions that will be necessary for the provision of the second (Schegloff 2007: 97–114). While both these types of expansions are normally themselves carried out through adjacency pairs, the third type of expansion – the post-expansion – is often more loosely structured and can take a wide variety of forms (Schegloff 2007: 115–180). 1.4.1.2 Relaxing the Notion of Sequential Constraint Conversations, of course, are not exclusively implemented through sequences of adjacency pairs. Rather the latter are a particularly tightly organized form of sequential constraint, in which recipients have few options or “room for maneuver.” However, the very idea of sequential organization suggests that talk is always organized by a relationship of “nextness” to a prior. And, even though this relationship may be looser in terms of the constraint placed on a next turn by a prior, it is still “central to the ways in which talk-ininteraction is organized and understood. Next turns are understood by coparticipants to display their speaker’s understanding of the just-prior turn and to embody an action responsive to the just-prior turn so understood” (Schegloff 2007: 15).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

1 Conversation Analysis

Consider the following case. Here a daughter Lesley (Les) has recommended garlic tablets to her mother, and enquires whether she has followed up on the suggestion: (6) [Field 1:1:89–94] 1 Les: Uh didyuh get yer garlic tablets. 2 Mum: Yes I’ve got them, 3 Les: Have yuh t- started tak[ing th’m 4 Mum: [I started taking th’m t’da:y 5 Les: Oh well do:n[e 6 Mum: → [Garlic’n parsley. 7 Les: ↑THAT’S RI: ght.[BY hhoh-u-Whole Food? 8 Mum: [( ) 9 (0.3) 10 Mum: Whole Foo:ds ye[s, 11 Les: [YES well done, 12 (0.3) 13 Mum: ( ) 14 (0.6) 15 Les: ‘s I’ve got Katharine on: th’m too: now,

This sequence begins with two adjacency pair sequences that are “chained” both logically and in terms of anaphoric reference. The sequence is apparently concluded with an oh-prefaced assessment (line 5), which is a frequent method of sequence closure (Heritage 1984b; Schegloff 2007: 118–136). However, at line 6 Mum initiates a further expansion of the sequence with “Garlic’n parsley” that is tied to Lesley’s initial turn that describes the tablets as “garlic” and is understandable, and understood, as a minor correction of that earlier characterization. When Lesley confirms this at line 7, she slightly mischaracterizes the name of the supermarket chain that sells the tablets, attracting a further correction from Mum at line 10. Lesley then confirms the now corrected name and moves to close the sequence with another assessment (line 11). At line 15, she initiates a further expansion on the subject. The point about this chain of turns is that, after line 5, none of these contributions is mandated by the turn preceding it. Rather, each is “volunteered” and achieves its sense as an action through its inferred connections to preceding talk. In this looser form of sequential organization, action is both constructed and understood through the retrospective application of relevance rules that convey the general sequential implicativeness of turns at talk (Heritage 2012b).

1.4.2 Preference Organization It is a readily observed fact about conversational interaction that participants generally avoid actions that disaffiliate with others. That is, confronted with an offer, request, invitation, or an evaluation of something, participants will

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press

19

20

JOHN HERITAGE

generally manage their conduct to avoid or mitigate responsive actions that disagree with or refuse what came before. Conversation analysts use the term “preference organization” to describe the range of practices that are associated with this outcome (Davidson 1984; Pomerantz 1984; Sacks 1987; Pomerantz and Heritage 2013; Pillet-Shore 2017). The term was coined by Sacks in a public lecture in 1973 (later published in 1987, some years after his death). It does not refer to the private, personal, or psychological desires of individuals, but rather to institutionalized practices of talk that are generally expected under such circumstances (Heritage 1984a: 265–280; Schegloff 2007: 58–96). In his original paper, Sacks argued that both first speakers and second speakers engage in practices that contribute to the minimization of potential or actual disaffiliation. A primary resource open to first speakers is the use of pre-sequences to check out the availability of recipients for some form of joint action, as in (7): (7)

[SB:1 (Schegloff 2007:31)] 1 John: Ha you doin- ‘knight’; pejoration as in the shift from cnafa ‘boy, servant’ > ‘knave’; broadening as in cyning ‘king, absolute monarch’ > ‘(figure)head of government’; narrowing as in deer ‘animal’ > ‘specific

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

51

52

ELIZABETH TRAUGOTT

kind of ruminant animal’; metaphor as in extension of king to any person or entity considered to be the best at something (king of portfolios); and metonymy as in wheels used to refer to car (see, e.g., Ullmann 1962; Bréal [1900] 2018). For the most part, these changes were studied out of context, although social factors like taboo and referential changes such as changes in cars (from carriages) were mentioned. The “cognitive turn” in the later part of the twentieth century led to many new conceptualizations of semantic change (e.g., Györi 2002; Geeraerts and Cuyckens 2007). Two aspects of the cognitive turn are particularly relevant for context. The fundamental shift in thinking was that meaning does not change. Rather, language users attribute new meanings to forms over time. A second important shift in thinking brought attention to pragmatic factors such as conversational implicatures (Traugott and Dasher 2002). The study of semantic change is now in large part understood as the study of semantic/ pragmatic change, not semantic change alone (Hansen and Visconti 2009). Interest shifted from changes in lexical meaning to changes associated with grammaticalization.

2.2.3 Diachronic Construction Grammar The third research domain that will figure large in what follows, especially in Section 2.4 on actualization of change, is diachronic construction grammar. While work on grammaticalization focuses on the question of how grammatical material comes into being, work on diachronic construction grammar focuses on how form–meaning pairings (constructions) come into being (e.g., Traugott and Trousdale 2013; Barðdal et al. 2015). There is inevitably some overlap in the domains studied, since grammatical units such as tense, aspect, and modality are constructions. However, the domain of diachronic construction grammar is larger, encompassing argument structure constructions such as ditransitives (e.g., She gave Melissa a book) and benefactives (e.g., She bought Melissa a book) (Zehentner and Traugott 2020); “nominative and infinitive” constructions like She is said to have bought Melissa a book (Noël 2008); and the way construction (e.g., Melissa elbowed her way through the crowd) (Israel 1996). Because studies of grammaticalization and diachronic construction grammar ask different questions, they are complementary and have much to offer each other where areas overlap (Coussé et al. 2018). There are several models of construction grammar (Hoffmann and Trousdale 2013). The model that has received most attention to date in historical work is that of Goldberg (1995, 2006). The foundational thesis of construction grammar is that knowledge of language consists of knowledge of form–meaning pairings. Therefore, in doing diachronic construction grammar, the researcher has to focus on change in both form and meaning, although in practice meaning often predominates (see Israel 1996; Enghels 2018).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

2 Context in Historical Linguistics

2.3 Contextual Factors That Enable Change 2.3.1 Ambiguity as an Enabling Factor Two highly influential papers theorizing enabling contexts in grammaticalization (also known as “grammaticization”) were published in 2002: Heine (2002) and Diewald (2002). The focus in both is on types of context that enable grammaticalization and on proposing scenarios in which these types are ordered as “stages” in change. These stages are not discrete but on a continuum (Heine 2002: 86). They can be thought of as sequences of contextual changes. Both Heine and Diewald posit a stage of ambiguity prior to grammaticalization in which the new “target” meaning can be inferred as well as the original “source” meaning. However, the stages have different names and are conceptualized somewhat differently. Heine (2002: 85–86) posits an unconstrained Stage I, a specific ambiguous “bridging context” which gives rise “to an inference in favor of the new meaning” (Stage II), a new “switch context” in which the source meaning is incompatible with the source meaning (Stage III), and a “conventionalization” Stage IV in which the new meaning “no longer needs to be supported by the context that gave rise to it” and uses in new contexts can occur. The switch context is the context in which grammaticalization becomes manifest. Heine suggests that switch contexts “can be viewed as a filtering device that rules out the source meaning” (p. 86). Diewald (2002: 103; 2006) posits a Stage I in which the unit in question begins to be used in “untypical contexts” where it has not been used before and new meanings may arise as conversational implicatures. At Stage II there may be a “critical context, which is characterized by multiple structural and semantic ambiguities and thus invites several alternative interpretations, among them the new grammatical meaning” (Diewald 2002: 103, italics original). This is the stage “in which, because of its multiple structural and semantic ambiguity, the grammaticalization process is triggered” (p. 116). At Stage III “isolating contexts” develop, in which the new reading ceases to be context-dependent. This is the stage in which grammaticalization becomes manifest: there are now two separate readings: the original lexical one and the new grammatical one (p. 117). Diewald points out that this conceptualization of “isolating contexts” makes them different from Heine’s “switch” contexts, in which the source lexical item is not mentioned. The similarities and differences can be summarized in Figure 2.1. Note that in both models grammaticalization (Gzn) is manifest at Stage III. The main differences are that Heine’s model includes conventionalization, a postgrammaticalization stage, and that Diewald posits structural as well a semantic and pragmatic ambiguity at Stage II. As she points out (Diewald 2002: 117), Heine focuses on meaning as a major enabling factor, while she finds “changes in related categories and subsystems” important too. Unlike Heine’s bridging contexts, these critical contexts are not necessarily structurally adjacent. In the

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

53

54

ELIZABETH TRAUGOTT

Heine

Diewald Stage 0: “normal” use

Stage I: “normal” use Stage I: “untypical” context

Stage II: “bridging” context

Stage II: “critical” context

(pragmatic, semantic)

(multiple opacity; pragmatic, semantic, structural)

Stage III: “switch” context

Stage III: “isolating” context (reorganization and differentiation)

Stage IV: conventionalization

Figure 2.1 Heine’s (2002) and Diewald’s (2006) models compared (based on Traugott 2012: 230)

particular case she studies, the grammaticalization of German modals, the enabling structural context “does not persist in later stages.” However, in other cases, structural enabling contexts may persist.

2.3.2 Contextual Expansion as an Enabling Factor Heine’s and Diewald’s work on context, as discussed above, is on stages of development, including the stage at which grammaticalization becomes manifest to other language users (and the linguist!). In another important paper on contextual factors in grammaticalization, Himmelmann (2004) focuses on the fact that many examples of grammaticalization (which he calls “grammaticization”) were in the early days presented in terms of the development of a bare lexical into a grammatical item without attention to context, e.g., of Latin ille ‘that’ into the French definite article le. However, “It is never just the grammaticizing element that undergoes grammaticization. Instead, it is the grammaticizing element in its syntagmatic context which is grammaticized” (Himmelmann 2004: 31, italics original). From the perspective of the lexical item, it diminishes in the process of grammaticalization: Latin ille is reduced in substance (two syllables to one, and, in the context of a following vowel, to the single segment l) and in meaning (from a distant demonstrative to an article). But from the perspective of the immediate context, that context expands.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

2 Context in Historical Linguistics

(Xn) An B | Kn → (Xn+x) An+x b | Kn+x where A and B represent full lexical items, b a grammaticized element and the following three types of contextual changes occur: a. host-class formation: An → An+x (e.g., common nouns → common and proper nouns) b. change of syntactic context: Xn → Xn+x (e.g., core argument position → core and peripheral argument positions) c. change of semantic/pragmatic context: Kn → Kn+x (e.g., anaphoric use → anaphoric and associative anaphoric use) Figure 2.2 Grammaticization as context expansion (Himmelmann 2004: 33)

Himmelmann proposes that the proper domain of grammaticalization is what he calls “constructions” (syntactic constituents). In many cases “the class of elements the gram is in construction with, i.e. the host class, may be expanded” (p. 32). For example, when demonstratives become articles the nouns with which they may occur (the “host-class”) may be expanded from common nouns to uniquely referring nouns like the sun, or proper names like The Mississippi. Further, pragmatic expansion may occur to “associative anaphoric uses (a wedding – the bride, a house – the front door), contexts in which use of demonstratives is impossible” (p. 33). The syntactic contexts in which the construction is used are often also relevant post-grammaticalization, for example, whether the construction is used as a core argument (subject or object) or a peripheral one (adverbial).2 Figure 2.2 presents Himmelmann’s formula for “grammaticization as context expansion.” It accounts for three kinds of context expansion: host-class expansion, syntactic expansion, and semantic/pragmatic expansion, and exemplifies with prototypical definite article development. Himmelmann regards semantic/pragmatic expansion as “the core defining feature of grammaticizing processes” (2004: 33). In Figure 2.2, A and B are lexical items, An is a class of lexical items, x is the expanded set, and b represents a particular grammaticalized lexical item B. X represents syntactic contexts, and K semantic/pragmatic contexts. The important point is that host-class expansion is itself contextualized within larger syntactic and semantic/pragmatic domains. In Himmelmann’s paper, the term “host-class formation” evokes the process of grammaticalization and appears to be conceptualized as occurring at roughly what Diewald calls the “critical context” stage. No temporal relationship between use of the three types of context is proposed. However, in later work on host-class expansion from the perspectives of grammaticalization theory and construction grammar, e.g., Hilpert (2008), host-class expansion, or rather “collexeme” expansion, is conceptualized chiefly as part of the postgrammaticalization actualization of a new grammatical unit (see Section 2.4.2). Although the models described above say little explicitly about exactly what changes may occur after grammaticalization has taken place, research on this question has flourished recently in quantitative research (e.g., Hilpert 2008). 2

This sketch ignores the fact that the rise of article may be part of the development of a determiner phrase (DP).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

55

56

ELIZABETH TRAUGOTT

Much of it has been conducted in terms of constructional changes discussed below in Section 2.4.

2.3.3 Inferences as Contexts Concomitant with research in grammaticalization in the later part of the twentieth century was increasing interest in pragmatic contexts for change (note Heine 2002 refers to the importance of inferences in “bridging contexts” at Stage II of grammaticalization). Traugott and Dasher (2002: 34–40) developed the Invited Inferencing Theory of Semantic Change (IITSC), according to which conversational implicatures ambient in contexts may be exploited and used innovatively. Eventually they may become conventionalized, in that they are normally associated with an expression. In this process, pragmatic implicatures play a significant enabling role. The IITSC draws on but is not identical with ideas developed in Grice ([1957] 1989) and Levinson (2000). As Hansen (1998: 28) points out, many implicatures are highly contextdependent. According to the IITSC, the implicatures that arise in the flow of SP/W’s speech are metonymic to speech because they are contiguous to it. If individual expressions and the implicatures associated with them are replicated and Addressees/ Readers (AD/Rs) repeatedly draw similar inferences from them, they may become conventionalized and enable new meanings to arise. One of Grice’s Maxims has played a significant role in historical semantic/ pragmatic work. It concerns the quantity of information to be provided and has two submaxims (Grice [1957] 1989: 26): (1) Quantity 1: Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange). Quantity 2: Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.

Reformulating these as SAY AS MUCH AS YOU CAN and SAY NO MORE THAN YOU MUST, Horn (1984) articulated an important hypothesis about diachronic lexical narrowing and broadening. In this work Horn paid little attention to discursive contexts. Traugott and Dasher’s (2002) contextual approach to meaning change builds on Horn’s conclusion that SAY NO MORE THAN YOU MUST leads to enriched interpretations. In this approach, the context can be local, for example, the constituent in which an expression occurs, or clausal, or even larger complex discourses. As an example, consider the development of the quasi-modal ought to (Nordlinger and Traugott 1997). In Present-Day English ought to expresses both deontic (obligation) meaning, as in You ought to write a note of thanks, and epistemic conclusion ([after a knock at the door] That ought to be Jill). Ought to has its origins in Old English agan ‘to have, own, possess,’ as in eall þæt heo ahte on golde ‘all that she had in gold’ (1042). In the larger syntactic context of non-finite complements with non-referential,

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

2 Context in Historical Linguistics

implied future meaning, and in which the purposive was locally expressed by geldan ‘to pay,’ agan was interpreted as ‘to owe,’ as in: (2) he spæc þa wið ænne he spoke then with a to geldene ten þusend pundæ to pay ten thousand pounds (c. 1000 ÆHomM [DOE agan II.A.I])

mon man

þe that

him him

ahte had

In similar passages in DOE ahte to geldene is used to translate Latin debebat ‘owed.’ This reinterpretation of the lexical verb agan by hypothesis arose out of replication of similar scenarios where it is implied that in order to pay a debt someone will be obliged to possess (temporarily) a certain amount of money. Uses of this kind in which future possession is expected for purposes of fulfilling an obligation are not unique to agan; they are also found associated with reinterpretation of have, as in have to do something. Obligation is only an implicature of agan in (2) and other examples prior to the eleventh century; it is contextually dependent on the future orientation of the non-finite clause. By the beginning of the eleventh century, some new uses appear that according to DOE “shade into auxiliary uses.” The obligation may concern a king’s right to taxes, but it may also concern moral and social obligations, as in (3), where possession is ruled out (Diewald would consider this evidence of an isolating context). (3) ic eow wylle eac eallswa cyðan, þæt man ah I you wish also similarly say that one ought seoce men to geneosianne and dead bebyrian sick men to visit and dead bury ‘I also want to say to you that one ought to visit sick people and bury the dead’ (early 11th century Hom U, 46 [DOE agan II A.2.a; Nordlinger and Traugott 1997: 307; Traugott and Dasher 2002: 140)

(3) exemplifies just one hypothesized source context for the deontic obligation: a non-finite clause with non-referential, future-oriented meaning, implicating that possession is an obligation. Further investigation would no doubt reveal additional contexts.

2.3.4 Constructional Assemblies as Contexts One of the contributions of work on diachronic construction grammar to the understanding of contexts that enable morphosyntactic change is that there may be “assemblies” of contexts, in other words, over time contexts that potentially enable a change may accumulate. For example, Petré (2019) investigates what he calls the first “episode” of the development of the auxiliary [BE going to INF] out of a motion construction, specifically the rise of the relative future in the early seventeenth century. In construction grammar of the Goldberg variety, utterances are conceptualized as combinations of constructions, e.g. What did Liza buy the child? is analyzed in Goldberg (2003: 221) as a combination of the constructions in (4):

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

57

58

ELIZABETH TRAUGOTT

(4) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Liza, buy, the, child, what, did the ditransitive construction the question construction the subject-verb auxiliary construction the VP construction the NP construction

Petré (2019: 166) identifies three constructions relevant to the first episode of the development of auxiliary [BE going to INF]:3 (5) 1. 2. 3.

the progressive construction [[BE V ing] ↔ [ongoing activity]] the verb [[GO] ↔ [‘go’]] construction purpose construction [[to INF] ↔ [intended activity]]

Each of these can be used by itself. They are attested combined in: (6) you thinke I am going to market to buy rost meat, de ye not? (1592, Wilson [Petré 2019: 166])

Here the utterance is fully compositional and is about motion with a purpose. Petré (2019) considers the progressive to have been a crucial factor in the development of [BE going to INF] future. Petré (2016) argues that [BE Ving] was originally a stative expression. By the sixteenth century it had been reinterpreted as an expression of ongoing activity especially in past tense adverbial clause environments in narratives and extended to use in present tense main clauses. It was used especially frequently with the verbs come and go (Petré 2016: 47). In the early seventeenth century. some topicalized examples are attested in which, although motion is relevant to the scene, it is backgrounded to intention to do something. The utterance is no longer fully compositional: intention predominates. (7) HORT: FLO:

. . . I must pick it out of him by wit. . . . what mary-bone of witte is your iudgement going to pick now? ‘. . . what essential part of wit are you, a person capable of good judgment, going to pick now?’ (1608, Day [Petré 2019: 173])

Additional contexts have been identified, such as passive complements of to, e.g., when he is going to be whipped (1628). What is important here is that by hypothesis somewhat frequent replication of assemblies of several contexts contributed to the first phase in the development of [BE going to INF] future. Furthermore, each of the constructions that came to be used in the assembly contributed to deprofiling of motion (Petré 2019: 185).

2.3.5 Ambient (Inter)subjectivity as the Context for (Inter)subjectification Language use is intersubjective. Speakers select what they want to say (subjectivity) to someone (intersubjectivity). Benveniste ([1958] 1971: 230) made a distinction that has proved useful in understanding subjectivity between the 3

[[Form] ↔ [Meaning]] formalizes “form–meaning pairing.”

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

2 Context in Historical Linguistics

syntactic subject (sujet d’énoncé) and speaking subject (sujet d’énonciation). The (inter)subjectivity of talk and text creation is the context for changes known as subjectification and intersubjectification. (Inter)subjectification has largely been associated with actualization. However, use as a procedural by definition involves a shift toward some subjectivity, since procedurals cue SP/ W’s perspective on the argument structure of the clause and on relationships between clauses. Therefore, I include subjectivity here in the section on contextual enabling factors and will point to examples of actualization in Section 2.4 below. There are currently two main views of (inter)subjectivity (see Cuyckens et al. 2010; López-Couso 2010). One is mainly synchronic and has been theorized by Langacker (e.g., 1990, 2006; see also Athanasiadou et al. 2006). On this view, (inter)subjectivity concerns how content of an utterance is construed. Cuyckens et al. (2010: 9) summarize construal as: (i) choice of degree of specificity, (ii) focus, or foregrounding and backgrounding, (iii) degree of prominence, as in A is above B vs. B is below A, and (iv) perspective, the viewing arrangement, especially the location of the speaker or hearer in the spatial domain at the time of speaking. All these are speaker-dependent, and therefore subjective. Langacker (1990: 23) calls the viewing arrangement in An earthquake is going to destroy that town “subjectification.” Here SP/W is offstage, not profiled as an argument of the clause. The other, mainly diachronic, perspective on (inter)subjectivity and especially (inter)subjectification has been theorized by Traugott (e.g., 2003, 2010; see also Davidse et al. 2010). Subjectivity is conceptualized as ambient in language use, but especially in certain domains of linguistic structure, such as grammatical markers, performative verbs (promise), and evaluative adjectives (probably). Intersubjectivity is conceptualized as SP/W’s expression of awareness of AD/R’s attitudes, beliefs, and especially “face” or “self-image.” Subjectification and intersubjectification have been characterized in Traugott (2003: 124–125) as the mechanisms of language change by which meanings tend: (8) a. “to become increasingly based in the SP/W’s subjective belief state or attitude toward what is being said” (subjectification) b. “to encode SP/Ws’ attention to the cognitive stances and social identities of addressees” (intersubjectification)

(Inter)subjectification may precede or follow grammaticalization/grammatical constructionalization. Focus in Traugott’s work on subjectification is on ways in which particular largely objective expressions come to be associated with increasingly subjective meanings, for example, when a circumstance adverbial of space (e.g., by the way ‘along the route’) or time (e.g., while ‘length of time’) is used as a connective, it is modestly subjectified. It no longer refers to space or time but is used to signal SP/W’s perspective on the relationship between discourse segment 1 and discourse segment 2. This kind of change is enabled by use of

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

59

60

ELIZABETH TRAUGOTT

the circumstance adverbial in syntactic positions such as topicalized initial position (9): (9)

but by the way your late stock being spent, here are ten peeces towards a supply. (1653, Brome, The mad couple well matched [Traugott 2020: 125])

Since procedurals by definition cue SP/W’s perspective on the relationship between arguments, temporality, connectivity, etc., early stages of grammaticalization (or grammatical constructionalization) are also by definition examples of (low) subjectification.4 Once procedural, slightly subjectified uses have come to be conventionalized, further subjectification may occur, as illustrated immediately below.

2.4 Contexts for Actualization Changes are dynamic and typically continue. In many cases they involve extension to new contexts. As a result, the contexts themselves may change. In earlier work it was argued, though somewhat controversially, that distinct polysemies may arise (Section 2.4.1). In more recent quantitative work, it is assumed that the use is modulated by extension to more contexts without a distinct polysemy arising (Section 2.4.2).

2.4.1 Contexts in the Rise of Polysemies Briefly, polysemy posits two or more related but distinct meanings, for example, out of context couple means (among other things) ‘two’ or ‘two people in a partnership relationship.’ Likewise, out of context ought to means ‘is obligated to’ or ‘I conclude that.’ However, in context, the distinctness may appear to be rather minimal, and distinguishing polysemy from contextual modulation can prove problematic even in broad-scaled work. Arguments against polysemy were a cornerstone of early work in Relevance Theory, an inferential approach to pragmatics (e.g., Blakemore 1987; Sperber and Wilson [1986] 1995), but see more recently, Carston (2019). In the early model, words are monosemous, which means that they are thought to have core meanings, and differences in meaning are considered to be minimal and non-discrete. They are modulated by context. There are only a few accounts of semantic/pragmatic change in Relevance Theoretic terms (e.g., Nicolle 2011). However, several historical linguists who work on pragmatics have adopted aspects of Relevance Theory. For example, Hansen (2008) argues for the Relevance Theoretic view that the semantics/pragmatics distinction is not between truth-conditional and non-truth-conditional meaning but between 4

Traugott and Dasher (2002) argued that some cases of subjectification also involve contentful, lexical meaning, e.g., use of promise ‘give assurance of’ as a performative verb. As De Smet and Verstraete (2006) point out, many of these are interpersonal, especially performative use of a speech act verb. The context in cases like this is social and not co-textual. It is not discussed further here.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

2 Context in Historical Linguistics

elements of meaning that are coded and those that arise inferentially from them in context. She nevertheless recognizes the importance of polysemy and proposes that polysemy “is to a large extent the result of diachronic sense extensions” that come to be “at least partially structured by family resemblances” (Hansen 2008: 35). Polysemy has been found to be an essential analytic tool in most work on semantic change, whether the polysemy is semantic or pragmatic (see Horn 1984; Sweetser 1990). It can be conceptualized as a relatively stable extension of earlier meaning. At least for a while, older and newer meanings coexist polysemously, a phenomenon known as “layering” (Hopper 1991: 22–24), and provide the context for further developments. In English several auxiliaries have come to be polysemous over time. BE going to V was first used in the early seventeenth century to express relative future (the later of two events). It was polysemous with BE going to V (motion with a purpose). After the beginning of the eighteenth century, it was extended to deictic uses based in the speaker’s perspective (subjectification). This is clearest in the context of an inanimate subject or there-construction (10), where SP/W is typically “offstage” (see Section 2.3.5): (10)

told him there was going to be an Inquisition made in some Accounts (1701, Anonymous [Petré 2019: 168])

Another example of the development of polysemy is the rise of epistemic uses of ought to meaning ‘it can be concluded that.’ Although a few examples appear in Middle English, this use is not well established until Early Modern English and is infrequent overall. As in the case of other auxiliaries with both obligation and epistemic readings (should and must), the context for epistemic readings is often an inanimate subject and the verb is BE as in (11). In (11) the first speaker expresses contempt at the unfashionableness of that little dowdy and uses ought to in the obligation sense, while the second speaker, Gertrude, defends her using ought to meaning ‘it can be concluded that’ (her trousseau will be correct because of who the tailor is): (11)

“that little dowdy who doesn’t even know how to dress decently! Common respect ought to(deontic) teach her about mourning!” “Her trousseau ought to(epistemic) be right: it was made by Madame Vauban,” interposes Gertrude. (1883, Douglas, Floyd Grandon’s Honor [COHA])

The developments of deictic future BE going to V and epistemic ought to V are both examples of changes in the domain of auxiliary verbs. Both are highly dependent on two contexts: (i) subject of the clause, (ii) type of V. Both are examples of subjectification, first weakly in the sense that use as a procedural always involves at least a small degree of subjectivity, and then more strongly as deictic and epistemic uses emerged respectively. Van linden (2012) explores the lexical development of modal meanings of adjectives like critical and essential both qualitatively and quantitatively in an analysis that refers to polysemy. She details how essential was borrowed from

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

61

62

ELIZABETH TRAUGOTT

French in the fifteenth-century meaning ‘by true nature’ (a defining property) as in þe Escencyalle Ioy es in þe lufe of Godd ‘the definitive joy is in the love of God’ (1440) (Van linden 2012: 90). This meaning was extended to relational use as in essentiall to every living creature (1656) (p. 91). A new modal meaning, ‘indispensible for,’ is attested in the early seventeenth century, as in Government is essential to formed and regular Societies (1681–1686) (p. 93), and a deontic ‘morally necessary’ meaning in the nineteenth century, as in it is essential to see whether (COBUILD Corpus) (p. 216). These changes exemplify increase in subjectivity and involve shifts in syntactic contexts that are so finegrained that they might be more properly thought of as revealing “modulations” of meaning.

2.4.2 Contexts for Modulations of Uses Hilpert (2008) explores a fine-grained approach to expanding contexts using diachronic distinctive collexeme analysis to track before changes in the preferred collocates of individual constructions” (p. 41). Because polysemies like those cited in Section 2.4.1 are context-dependent, he queries the validity of the hypothesis that there are two or more senses (p. 137) but does not completely reject polysemy. Combining the perspectives of grammaticalization and diachronic construction grammar, he shows that the top ten verbs in the complement of BE going to from 1710 on, the period when deictic function had already been established, shifted in the 1850s from primarily telic, dynamic, and intentional verbs such as say, fight, and give to more stative verbs such as be, have. By comparison, future auxiliary gaan ‘go’ in Dutch is first found in the context of imperfective motion verbs and is later extended to cognitive and experiential verbs such as denken ‘think’ and voelen ‘feel.’ Hilpert’s conclusion is that generalized, abstract schematic “paths” of grammaticalization are misleading. At a fine-grained contextual level, there may be significant differences in how particular grammatical units are conceptualized and used. Hilpert (2013) has refined the diachronic distinctive collexemic method using “variability-based neighbor clustering.” Important here is the distinction between changes in particular types of collocation and changes in the token frequency with which a particular collocation type is used. These are both contexts that allow for further modulations.

2.4.3 Contexts Enabling Analogical Change A much-studied motivation for change in recent years is analogy. In thinking about analogy it is useful to distinguish analogical thinking, a motivation that may result in activation of the mechanism of analogization, the creation of new uses based on pattern similarity (Traugott and Trousdale 2013: 37–38). De Smet (2012) shows how actualization “proceeds from one environment to another on the basis of similarity relations between environments” (p. 601). Actualization is understood as the process by which “an item’s new syntactic

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

2 Context in Historical Linguistics

status manifests itself in new syntactic behavior” (p. 601). This new syntactic behavior may be based on local surface forms rather than on abstract generalizations. Actualization may be “sneaky” (p. 608) because “language change often advances most easily where it is least obtrusive, apparently thriving on structural ambiguities and (possibly superficial) resemblances to existing patterns” (p. 607). Among De Smet’s examples is the rise of all but as a downtoner meaning ‘not quite,’ using CLMETEV (pp. 611–617).5 Initially, all but meant ‘everything except’ and was used in the context of NPs (1766, all but his misfortunes). Contexts were extended to gerund nominals (1773, all but the whining end of a modern novel), where all but could be interpreted as ‘almost.’ De Smet hypothesizes that the semantic reinterpretation was due “to a pragmatic implicature that if something is ‘everything but not X’, it is ‘nearly X.’” (p.611). This reinterpretation enabled a new use in the nineteenth century as a downtoner in the context of adjectives (1864 now all but complete) and verbs (1947 he all but knocked over a young woman). De Smet (2012: 615) shows that in the CLMETEV data all but appears with predicative noun phrases like They’re all but a parcel of Pigeons (1773) before it appears with attributive adjectives as in I really have been all but disconcerted (1835) and suggests this is because of pattern similarity. In the shift from predicative to attributive environments, the type of syntactic subject remains constant, as do the predicative function and the pattern BE all but. This is a “sneaky,” almost imperceptible shift. Such analogical extensions are the context for further extensions. As De Smet (2013: 255) points out, one extension opens up new possibilities for further extensions: “one change only becomes possible as a result of a previous change.” In this case, an “analogical chain” has arisen. Collexemic and inferential contexts are contiguous contexts in the linear flow of speech or writing on what is called the “syntagmatic dimension.” Analogical contexts are patterns and potential variants in what is known as the “paradigmatic dimension.” A prototypical paradigm is the set of inflections that may be used in an inflectional language for case or tense. This kind of morphological set is typically restricted in number of types and comes to be reduced over time. For example, in the system of Old English verbs, past singular and past plural indicative and subjunctive tenses were distinguished; a relic of the singular–plural distinction is to be found in was–were, but elsewhere it has been lost (for an account of the gradual reorganization of morphological paradigms in English, some of it due to prescriptivism, see Lass 2006). Typically, adjustments occur over time that generalize one variant over another. For example, of the various forms of the past tense in Old English, -ed was selected. Diewald and Smirnova (2012) suggest that the formation of paradigms is a fourth stage of grammaticalization in addition to the three posited in Figure 2.1. This is a rather restrictive view of grammaticalization (Hilpert 2013: 11), but it has been fruitful in thinking about how patterns 5

A “downtoner” is an expression that reduces the force of its complement.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

63

64

ELIZABETH TRAUGOTT

develop, whether of a homogeneous kind such as inflections alone or of a mixed kind like inflections and prepositional phrases (e.g., case marking). In particular, because Diewald and Smirnova conceptualize grammatical markers as constructions, it has been fruitful in thinking about integration of constructions into networks. These networks are the contexts for change (Sommerer and Smirnova 2020).

2.4.4 Testing Hypotheses about Analogization De Smet’s examples support the analogization hypothesis because the contexts are so similar. Sometimes, however, there may be competing hypotheses about a development. Hilpert (2013) suggests that variability-based neighborhood clustering can be used to test for evidence of analogization (he calls it “analogy”) in morphosyntax. His example (pp. 180–198) is use of concessive parentheticals with while and if meaning ‘although,’ as in (12): (12) While young, Reed is rated as a top player.

The question is whether this type of concessive parenthetical could have been derived by reduction from full concessive clauses (while he is young) or analogized on temporal uses of while as in While young, I was taught that anger is bad (p. 181). Hilpert argues that if the reduction hypothesis is supported, the semantic and structural behavior of the concessive parentheticals should be reasonably similar to that of the full clauses, in other words, there should be considerable overlap in contexts. Similarly, if the analogization hypothesis is supported, the semantic and structural behavior of the concessive parentheticals should be reasonably similar to that of temporal parentheticals. Again, the contexts should overlap. Synchronic data from the TIME corpus does not support the hypothesis of analogization with temporal uses on several grounds identified by the variability-based neighborhood clustering methodology. For example, concessive parentheticals with while are favored mainly in clause-medial position but temporal parentheticals with while are favored in final position and with -ing forms (e.g., while texting). The results suggest that the hypothesis of reduction from a full concessive clause is better supported than the analogization hypothesis for concessive parentheticals like (12).

2.5 Suggestions for Further Research As has been shown in this overview, in usage-based historical linguistics context is a factor in all change, even if research is limited to co-textual contexts. A recurrent question in the research mentioned above is whether particular kinds of change can be predicted from context, and indeed whether one can predict the kinds of context that will be relevant in a particular type of change.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

2 Context in Historical Linguistics

These questions require further study. However, the more detailed the analysis, the clearer it becomes that little can be predicted beyond the fact that change is highly context-dependent (Hilpert 2013). Furthermore, contexts continually change. Some correlations have been observed between discursive contexts and change, but they tend to be rather specific. For example, Lenker (2010: 38) found that in English many adverbials used in the context of verbs of locution (say, tell) gave rise to discourse markers, e.g., in addition, by the way. Lenker (2010) and Haselow (2013) have also noted that post-clausal position is often associated with expressions of concession or correction (see, e.g., postcausal uses of however, then), but this cannot be generalized to all discourse markers, e.g., by the way. Some other areas of research that are called for include further work on patterns and networks as contexts for change, as suggested in Section 2.4.3. This will require conceptualizing patterns and networks as contexts rather than as independent components of knowledge of language. Most importantly, in-depth integration of work on co-textual contexts with various types of “external context” is essential for a full understanding of how context contributes to change. Hilpert (2013) includes sex, age, register, and other well-known sociolinguistic factors in his variability neighborhood clustering and binary linguistic regression models. But there is a wealth of other factors to consider since language is a complex adaptive system (Beckner et al. 2009). As mentioned in Section 2.1, among them are the role of turn-taking and other interactional factors in change (Hansen and Visconti 2009), and of multimodal, including gestural contexts (Hata 2016). Schmid (2016) suggests a model for integrating pragmatics, sociolinguistic, and cognitive linguistics. Such models are called for to inform the variety of approaches to language systems.

Corpora CLMETEV

COBUILD COHA

DOE

TIME

The Corpus of Late Modern English Texts Extended Version, compiled by Hendrik de Smet. University of Leuven. https:// perswww.kuleuven.be/~u0044428/clmet.htm Collins Bank of English. 1990–1999. Compiled by John Sinclair. University of Birmingham. Corpus of Historical American English. 1810–2009. Compiled by Mark Davies. Brigham Young University. www.englishcorpora.org/coha/ Dictionary of Old English. A–I online. 2018. Angus Cameron, Ashley Crandell Amos, and Antonette diPaolo Healey. Toronto: Dictionary of Old English Project. Time Magazine Corpus. 2007–. Compiled by Mark Davies. Brigham Young University. http://corpus.byu.edu/time

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

65

66

ELIZABETH TRAUGOTT

References Athanasiadou, A., Canakis,C., and Cornillie, B., eds. (2006). Subjectification: Various Paths to Subjectivity. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Barðdal, J., Smirnova, E., Sommerer, L., and Gildea, S. eds. (2015). Diachronic Construction Grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Beckner, C., Ellis, N. C., Blythe, R., Holland, J., Bybee, J., Ke, J., Christiansen, M. H., Larsen-Freeman, D., Croft, W., Schoenemann, T., and Five Graces Group (2009). Language is a complex adaptive system: Position paper. Language Learning, 59(Suppl. 1), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9922.2009.00533.x. Benveniste, É. [1958] (1971). Subjectivity in language. In Problems in General Linguistics (trans. M. E. Meek) (pp. 223–230). Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press. Blakemore, D. (1987). Semantic Constraints on Relevance. Oxford: Blackwell. Bréal, M. [1900] (2018). Semantics: Studies in the Science of Meaning (trans. Mrs. Henry Cust). New York: Dover. Bybee, J. L. (2010). Language, Usage and Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bybee, J., Perkins, R., and Pagliuca, W. (1994). The Evolution of Grammar: Tense, Aspect, and Modality in the Languages of the World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Carston, R. (2019). Ad hoc concepts, polysemy and the lexicon. In K. Scott, B. Clark, and R. Carston (eds.), Relevance, Pragmatics and Interpretation (pp. 150–162). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Comrie, B. (2003). Reconstruction, typology, and reality. In R. Hickey (ed.), Motives for Language Change (pp. 234–257). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Coussé, E., Andersson, P., and Olofsson, J., eds. (2018). Grammaticalization Meets Construction Grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Croft, W. (2000). Explaining Language Change. Harlow: Longman, Pearson Education. Cuyckens, H., Davidse, K., and Vandelanotte, L. (2010). Introduction. In K. Davidse, L. Vandelanotte, and H. Cuyckens (eds.), Subjectification, Intersubjectification and Grammaticalization (pp. 1–26). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Davidse, K., Vandelanotte, L., and Cuyckens, H., eds. (2010). Subjectification, Intersubjectification and Grammaticalization. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton. Dehé, N., and Wichmann, A. (2010). Sentence-initial I think (that) and I believe (that): Prosodic evidence for use as main clause, comment clause and discourse marker. Studies in Language, 34, 36–74. De Smet, H. (2012). The course of actualization. Language, 88(4), 601–633. De Smet, H. (2013). Spreading Patterns: Diffusional Change in the English System of Complementation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. De Smet, H., and Verstraete, J.-C. (2006). Coming to terms with subjectivity. Cognitive Linguistics, 17(3), 365–392. Diewald, G. (2002). A model for relevant types of contexts in grammaticalization. In I. Wischer and G. Diewald (eds.), New Reflections on Grammaticalization (pp. 103–120). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Diewald, G. (2006). Context types in grammaticalization as constructions. Constructions SV1–9. Diewald, G., and Smirnova, E. (2012). “Paradigmatic integration”: The fourth stage in an expanded grammaticalization scenario. In K. Davidse, T. Breban, L. Brems, and

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

2 Context in Historical Linguistics

T. Mortelmans (eds.), Grammaticalization and Language Change: New Reflections (pp. 111–134). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Enghels, R. (2018). Towards a constructional approach to discourse-level phenomena: The case of the Spanish interpersonal epistemic stance construction. Folia Linguistica, 52(1), 107–138. Fetzer, A. (2012). Contexts in interaction: Relating pragmatic wastebaskets. In R. Finkbeiner, J. Meibauer, and P. B. Schumacher (eds.), What Is a Context? Linguistic Approaches and Challenges (pp. 105–128). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Finkbeiner, R., J. Meibauer, and P. B. Schumacher, eds. (2012). What Is a Context? Linguistic Approaches and Challenges. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Frank, R. M., Dirven, R. Ziemke, T., and Bernárdez, E., eds. (2008). Body, Language and Mind, Vol. II: Sociocultural Situatedness. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Geeraerts, D., and Cuyckens, H., eds. (2007). The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press. Givón, T. [1979] (2018). On Understanding Grammar. New York: Academic Press. Goldberg, A. E. (1995). Constructions: A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Goldberg, A. E. (2003). Constructions: A new theoretical approach to language. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 219–224. Goldberg, A. E. 2006. Constructions at Work: The Nature of Generalization in Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Grice, H. P. [1957] (1989). Logic and conversation. In Studies in the Way of Words (pp. 22–40). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Györi, G. (2002). Semantic change and cognition. Cognitive Linguistics, 13(2), 123–168. Hansen, M.-B. Mosegaard (1998). The Function of Discourse Particles: A Study with Special Reference to Spoken Standard French. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Hansen, M.-B. Mosegaard (2008). Particles at the Semantics/Pragmatics Interface: Synchronic and Diachronic Issues: A Study with Special Reference to the French Phasal Adverbs. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Hansen, M.-B. Mosegaard, and Visconti, J. eds. (2009). Current Trends in Diachronic Semantics and Pragmatics. Bingley: Emerald Group. Haselow, A. (2013). Arguing for a wide conception of grammar: The case of final particles in spoken discourse. Folia Linguistica, 47, 375–424. Hata, K. (2016). On the importance of the multimodal approach to discourse markers: A pragmatic view. International Review of Pragmatics, 8(1), 36–54. Heine, B. (2002). On the role of context in grammaticalization. In I. Wischer and G. Diewald (eds.), New Reflections on Grammaticalization (pp. 83–101). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Heine, B., Claudi, U., and Hünnemeyer, F. (1991). Grammaticalization: A Conceptual Framework. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hernández-Campoy, J. M., and Conde-Silvestre, J. C., eds. (2015). The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics. Chichester: Wiley & Sons. Hilpert, M. (2008). Germanic Future Constructions: A Usage-Based Approach to Language Change. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Hilpert, M. (2013). Constructional Change in English: Developments in Allomorphy, Word-Formation and Syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Himmelmann, N. P. (2004). Lexicalization and grammaticization: Opposite or orthogonal? In W. Bisang, N. P. Himmelmann, and B. Wiemer (eds.), What Makes

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

67

68

ELIZABETH TRAUGOTT

Grammaticalization: A Look from Its Fringes and Its Components (pp. 21–42). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Hoffmann, T., and Trousdale, G. eds. (2013). The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar. New York: Oxford University Press. Hopper, P. J. (1991). On some principles of grammaticization. In E. C. Traugott, and B. Heine (eds.), Approaches to Grammaticalization (Vol. I, pp. 17–35). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Hopper, P. J., and E. C. Traugott [1993] (2003). Grammaticalization, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Horn, L. R. (1984). Toward a new taxonomy for pragmatic inference: Q-based and R-based implicature. In Deborah Schiffrin (ed.), Meaning, Form, and Use in Context: Linguistic Applications; Georgetown University Round Table’ 84 (pp. 11–42). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Israel, M. (1996). The way constructions grow. In Adele Goldberg (ed.), Conceptual Structure, Discourse and Language (pp. 217–230). Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. Jacobs, A., and Jucker, A. H. (1995). The historical perspective in pragmatics. In Andreas H. Jucker (ed.), Historical Pragmatics: Pragmatic Development in the History of English (pp. 3–33). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Kemmer, S., and Barlow, M. 2000. Introduction: A usage-based conception of language. In Michael Barlow, and Suzanne Kemmer (eds.), Usage-Based Models of Language (pp. vii–xxviii). Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. Kuryłowicz, J., [1965] (1975). The evolution of grammatical categories. In Jerzy Kuryłowicz, Esquisses linguistiques (Vol. II, pp. 38–54). Munich: Fink. Kuteva, T., Heine, B., Hong, B., Long, H., Narrog, H., and Rhee, S. (2019). World Lexicon of Grammaticalization, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Langacker, R. W. (1990). Subjectification. Cognitive Linguistics, 1(1), 5–38. Langacker, R. W. (2006). Subjectification, grammaticization, and conceptual archetypes. In A. Athanasiadou, C. Canakis, and B. Cornillie (eds.), Subjectification: Various Paths to Subjectivity (pp. 17–40). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Lass, R. (2006). Phonology and morphology. In R. Hogg, and D. Denison, (eds.), A History of the English Language (pp. 43–108). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lehmann, C. [1995] (2015). Thoughts on Grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin: Language Science Press. Lenker, U. (2010). Argument and Rhetoric: Adverbial Connectors in the History of English. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Levinson, S. C. (2000). Presumptive Meanings: The Theory of Generalized Conversational Implicature. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Lightfoot, D. (1999). The Development of Language: Acquisition, Change, Evolution. Oxford: Blackwell. Lindblom, J. and Ziemke, T. (2002). Social situatedness: Vygotsky and beyond. Adaptive Behavior, 11(2), 79–96. López-Couso, M. J. (2010). Subjectification and intersubjectification. In A. H. Jucker and I. Taavitsainen (eds.), Historical Pragmatics (pp. 127–163). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Meillet, A. [1912] (1958). L’évolution des formes grammaticales. In A. Meillet, Linguistique historique et linguistique générale (pp. 130–148). Paris: Champion.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

2 Context in Historical Linguistics

Milroy, J., and Milroy, L. (1985). Linguistic change, social network and speaker innovation. Journal of Linguistics, 21(2), 339–383. Narrog, H., and Heine, B., eds. (2011). The Oxford Handbook of Grammaticalization. New York: Oxford University Press. Newport, E. L. (2019). Children and adults as language learners: Rules, variation, and maturational change. Topics in Cognitive Science: Topic 2017 Rumelhart Prize Issue honoring Lila Gleitman. Wiley Online Library. https://doi.org/10.1111/tops.12416 (accessed January 26, 2021). Nicolle, S. (2011). Pragmatic aspects of grammaticalization. In H. Narrog and B. Heine (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Grammaticalization (pp. 401–412). New York: Oxford University Press. Noël, D. (2008). The nominative and infinitive in Late Modern English: A diachronic constructionist approach. Journal of English Linguistics, 36(4), 314–340. Norén, K., and Linell, P. (2007). Meaning potentials and the interaction between lexis and contexts: An empirical substantiation. Pragmatics, 17(3), 387–416. Nordlinger, R., and E. C. Traugott (1997). Scope and the development of epistemic modality. English Language and Linguistics, 1(2), 295–317. Petré, P. (2016). Grammaticalization by changing co-text frequencies, or why [BE Ving] became the “progressive.” English Language and Linguistics, 20(1), 31–54. Petré, P. (2019). How constructions are born: The role of patterns in the constructionalization of be going to INF. In B. Busse and R. Möhlig-Falke (eds.), Patterns in Language and Linguistics: New Perspectives on a Ubiquitous Concept (pp. 157–192). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Schmid, H.-J. (2016). Why Cognitive Linguistics must embrace the social and pragmatic dimensions of language and how it could do so more seriously. Cognitive Linguistics, 27(4), 543–557. Sommerer, L., and Smirnova, E., eds. (2020). Nodes and Networks in Diachronic Construction Grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Sperber, D., and Wilson, D. [1986] (1995). Relevance: Communication and Cognition, 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell. Sweetser, E. E. (1990). From Etymology to Pragmatics: Metaphorical and Cultural Aspects of Semantic Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Traugott, E. C. (2003). From subjectification to intersubjectification. In R. Hickey (ed.), Motives for Language Change (pp. 124–139). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Traugott, E. C. (2010). (Inter)subjectivity and (inter)subjectification: A reassessment. In K. Davidse, L. Vandelanotte, and H. Cuyckens (eds.), Subjectification, Intersubjectification and Grammaticalization (pp. 29–71). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Traugott, E. C. (2012). The status of onset contexts in analysis of micro-changes. In M. Kytö (ed.), English Corpus Linguistics: Crossing Paths (pp. 221–255). Amsterdam: Rodopi. Traugott, E. C. (2020). The development of “digressive” discourse–topic shift markers in English. Journal of Pragmatics, 156, 121–135. Traugott, E. C., and Dasher, R. B. (2002). Regularity in Semantic Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Traugott, E. C., and Trousdale, T. (2013). Constructionalization and Constructional Changes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

69

70

ELIZABETH TRAUGOTT

Ullmann, S. (1962). Semantics: An Introduction to the Science of Meaning. Oxford: Blackwell. Van linden, A. (2012). Modal Adjectives: English Deontic and Evaluative Constructions in Diachrony and Synchrony. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Walkden, G. 2019. The many faces of uniformitarianism in linguistics. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics, 4(1), 52, 1–17. Zehentner, E., and Traugott, E. C. (2020). Constructional networks and the development of benefactive ditransitives in English. In L. Sommerer and E. Smirnova (eds.), Nodes and Networks in Diachronic Construction Grammar (pp. 168–211). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press

3 Context in Discourse Analysis Cedric Deschrijver and Alexandra Georgakopoulou

3.1 Introduction Despite being inescapable in socially orientated discourse studies, the notion of context has remained highly ambiguous and elusive. Though it is nowadays acknowledged that discourse should be analyzed in view of its situated production and interpretation, a generally accepted definition or operationalization of context, satisfying the needs of various approaches within discourse studies, is still lacking. Within the field, different views on context often relate to the methodological and epistemological foundations of various research traditions. Work rooted in Conversation Analysis, for example, has adopted a relatively restricted view of context: Its features are only relevant if and when the interlocutors audibly or visibly orient to them (e.g., Schegloff 1997). Critical Discourse Studies, by contrast, may assume certain social structures as immanently present, and textually attestable, features of discourse context (e.g., Fairclough 1995). It would not do justice to the field to provide necessarily brief and limited examples of how “context” has been operationalized within different approaches. Instead, this chapter seeks to focus on facets of convergence that, despite a lack of overall theoretical consensus, have become increasingly accepted within an ongoing, productive discussion in the field. This convergence is summarized in Section 3.2.1 as a view of context as dynamically and interactionally constituted. In Section 3.2.2, we show how this dynamically and interactionally constituted context is retrievable in discourse through linguistic features that reflect the self-referential qualities of language, which, in turn, makes context recursive (Section 3.2.3). Following from that we show how, due to its complexity, “context” is often analyzed through different layers (Section 3.2.4), and we present the latest developments in the aforementioned dynamic view of context in Section 3.2.5. By adopting this approach to analyze the contentious notion of “context,” the chapter allows us to acknowledge and take stock of how far the field has

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

72

CEDRIC DESCHRIJVER AND ALEXANDRA GEORGAKOPOULOU

come in developing a critical mass. Only three decades ago, for instance, in Duranti and Goodwin’s (1992) seminal volume Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon, many features of context that will be discussed in this chapter, especially its dynamic nature, seemed at best incipient. The features of context will be illustrated and made more tangible with reference to the framework of small stories research in Section 3.3. Finally, after discussing the issue of delineating context in Section 3.4, Section 3.5 highlights contemporary social trends that may inform the future study of context. Specifically, these trends suggest an analytical focus on fragmented, complex communicative situations as prime areas for further theoretical work.

3.2 Theoretical Elements and Illustrations 3.2.1 Early Dynamic and Interactional Conceptions of Context Early works in linguistics have attested that linguistic forms can only be meaningful and fully understood in reference to, and presence of, a certain context (see “context of situation” in Malinowski 1923). A case in point are deictic features of language (e.g., she, there, earlier), which are only interpretable within a certain context. Through deictics, context is marked and encoded in language use. For instance, the deictic here in an utterance may be understood as a trace of the utterance being produced in the same place to which it is referring. At the same time, while deictics are traces of context, language also “points to” language users and the situation in which communicative signs occur (Bar-Hillel 1954), thus making the text–context relation a mutually constitutive one. Such early articulations of the text-context relationship, however, may by now be viewed as narrowly conceived accounts, emphasizing a well-defined extralinguistic context to which language intrinsically referred. Schneider (1993), as cited in Auer (1996), describes this issue as the “semantization of pragmatics”: a truth-conditional assessment of the traces in discourse left by an external context that relies on representational theories of language. To be sure, it is difficult to deny an extralinguistic objective reality of aspects of context, such as day–night cycles or other natural phenomena, especially when these “pre-linguistic” features are necessary to interpret certain utterances (see Verschueren 1999: 109ff.). Nor is it necessarily desirable to remove the idea of an objectively verifiable reality from discourse-analytical endeavors (see, e.g., Hacking 1999). Yet an analysis that predominantly focuses on extralinguistic aspects of context as a separate, surrounding environment of discourse cannot adequately address social aspects of that same context that only come into being through discursive action; nor can it adequately explain nonreferential aspects of meaning, such as those that depend on interaction between participants. Rather than a static view of context (as preexisting to acts of communication and unchangeable by them), a dynamic view of context, emphasizing that

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

3 Context in Discourse Analysis

some of its aspects are brought into being through language, is nowadays commonly accepted in discourse studies. This dynamic nature of context takes two main forms: (i) discourse can construct features of context, and (ii) participants may more or less strategically highlight, negotiate, or equally resist certain aspects of context. Foundational work paving the way for this understanding is that of Goffman (e.g., 1964, [1974] 1986). He started with the observation that talk is guided and managed by the type of social situation that participants find themselves in: A card game requires different forms of speaking from a formal, institutional encounter. Yet, for a particular context to have a bearing on talk, it must first be mutually ratified by participants in interaction (1964), i.e., dynamically brought into being. Participants, furthermore, need not acquiesce to the requirements of whatever social situation they find themselves in. Rather, they may “frame” the context of talk. They may also change their “footing” toward a certain frame: They may alter their alignment toward themselves and others “as expressed in the way [they] manage the production or reception of an utterance” (Goffman 1981: 127), as in Goffman’s (1981) famous example in which the then US president Nixon marked a break from “business” by engaging in small talk with a reporter. While Goffman’s observations were primarily derived from face-to-face, oral interactions, they have shaped discourse-analytic approaches to both oral and written discourse, especially those influenced by linguistic ethnography. Other perspectives also acknowledge the dynamic influence of language on context. In Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG), for example, Halliday and Hasan (1976) adopt Malinowski’s (1923) terminology and argue that features of a “context of situation” are associated with specific linguistic attributes, which collectively constitute a register. As Martin explains, in SFG, a text does not operate as removed from context, but dynamically construes readers’ “understandings and expectations” (2003: 35) about social context, allowing for readers’ interpretation of context. SFG served as the basis for earlier works of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), which sought to analyze discourse’s ideological frameworks that may, for current purposes, be considered contextual (and see Section 3.4). Another influential conceptualization of context as dynamic, which emphasizes that context is also an interactive achievement of the participants, is found within Conversation Analysis, where context is fundamentally defined as cotext. The premise of this definition is that “the events of conversation have a sense and import to participants which are at least partially displayed in each successive contribution, and which are thereby put to some degree under interactional control” (Schegloff 1997: 165). It is in these moment-bymoment contributions and “endogenous orientations of the participants” (p. 167) that conversation analysts urge us to look for the constitution of a context relevant for a given interaction. Context is essentially constituted by speakers’ actions which are in turn “doubly contextual.” Specifically, “a speaker’s action is context-shaped: its contribution to an ongoing sequence of

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

73

74

CEDRIC DESCHRIJVER AND ALEXANDRA GEORGAKOPOULOU

events cannot be understood but by reference to the context, including specifically the immediate configuration of actions, in which it participates. But it is also context-shaping: it shapes a new context for the action that will follow” (Heritage 1984: 242). The idea that talk-in-interaction has a defensible sense of its own reality and that, in this sense, the analyst’s identification of relevant contexts for a given interaction should both be grounded in participants’ orientations and be ‘an outcome, a finding, a result of analysis, [not] a presupposition of analysis [or] a definition of what analysis should be’ (Schegloff 1997: 170, emphases in original), currently holds sway over diverse approaches to context in discourse analysis.

3.2.2 Contextualization Cues, Indexicality, and Discourse Markers The combination of Goffmanian insights with the toolkit of linguistic anthropology has engendered influential theoretical models that have established the role of a wide range of linguistic items in constructing context. Of relevance here are Gumperz’s (1982) notions of “contextualization cues” and Tannen’s (1993) subsequent elaboration on how these cues frame discourse. Gumperz’s “contextualization cues” refer to “constellations of surface features of message form . . . by which speakers signal and listeners interpret what the activity is, how semantic content is to be understood and how each sentence relates to what precedes or follows” (1982: 131, emphasis in original). The description “surface features” is aptly broad, as these cues encompass lexical and syntactic choices, phonological features, and a myriad of formulaic expressions and strategies. Gumperz, then, not only analyses linguistic features in terms of their contribution to the text-context interface, but also grounds these in participants’ understandings of context, revealing if and how participants achieve their situated conversational goals. This explains why, in his Discourse Strategies (1982), the analytical focus lies on miscommunications, where relevant contextualization cues are either not recognized or misinterpreted. Contextualization cues, and the associated processes of contextualization and decontextualization, are not merely in the purview of communicative participants; they also aid the analyst in “discern[ing] how the participants themselves determine which aspects of the ongoing social interaction are relevant” (Bauman and Briggs 1990: 68). As such, they point to the aspects of context which participants dynamically orient to. This allows analysts to retrace participants’ dynamic meaning-making, through pinpointing aspects of context that are treated as relevant by participants. This methodological approach remains influential, especially in discourse studies that draw on linguistic anthropology (though see Section 3.2.5 for most recent discussions). Its main benefit consists in delimiting context for analytical purposes, thus avoiding the “dizzying effect” of the “apparent unboundedness of context” (Verschueren 1999: 108). To restrict this analytical remit of “context,” the concept of indexicality has emerged as playing a key role. Originally a concept of linguistic anthropology,

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

3 Context in Discourse Analysis

it has been applied to the study of context building upon early attention to the deixis–context relation (see, e.g., Hanks 1992). Indexicality involves the creation of semiotic links between linguistic devices and social meanings that are (more or less) implicit, direct, mediated, and associative (cf. Ochs 1992). In this way it moves us away from referential, propositional meaning-making to nonreferential, implied relations between text and context. These implied relations are construed in discourse with processes as disparate as categorization of social actors, stance taking (i.e., expressing an attitude toward a proposition), change in prosody, code-switching (i.e., switching between different languages or language varieties in a single communicative event), and several others. Gumperz’s contextualization cues may be seen in the same light: they signal a participant’s recognition of, and orientation toward, nonreferential meanings. A comparable framework to that of Gumperz, in terms of providing distributional analyses of discursive elements in the constitution of context, is to be found in Schiffrin’s (1987) influential account of discourse markers (see also Maschler and Schiffrin 2015). Discourse markers encompass conjunctions (such as and, but, because), temporal indicators (now, then) as well as various relatively idiomatic expressions such as oh, you know or I mean. In Schiffrin’s (1987) analysis, discourse markers are multi-functional and versatile: They may operate on one or more of five “planes of talk”: “information state,” “participation framework,” “ideational structure,” “action structure,” and “exchange structure” (Schiffrin 1987: 315ff.). A discourse marker such as but may function on an ideational structure (linking ideas), an action structure (offering a counterargument), and an exchange structure (where but signals a new turn where the utterer has the floor). The discourse marker well is one that may function on all five planes. In pointing to more than one aspect of context simultaneously, discourse markers unite several structural features of discourse (e.g., ideational, actional) while also indexing the roles of communicative actors in a participation framework. A marker such as but may thus occasion an indexical relation with a previous text (to which the following text is in opposition) while also indexing that the utterer locates themselves in an oppositional role in a participation framework. Both contextualization cues and discourse markers are grounded in the theoretical notion of metapragmatics, a functional modality of language use that, in simplified terms, links aspects of language use with its indexical/ pragmatic context through participants’ own awareness of language use (Silverstein 1993; Verschueren 2000). Since discourse markers clarify framing and participation frameworks, they may also have a metacommunicative function (as in talking about the situated communication). Both Gumperz’s and Schiffrin’s frameworks convincingly show that even relatively minor linguistic choices may contribute to the dynamic construction of context. In doing so, these linguistic choices both reflect participants’ own interpretation of the contextual situation and provide a means for analysts to reconstruct how participants interactionally construct context.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

75

76

CEDRIC DESCHRIJVER AND ALEXANDRA GEORGAKOPOULOU

3.2.3 Recursivity of Dynamic Contexts and Frames The studies cited above show that context is not (merely) an external factor affecting discourse production and interpretation; rather, it is continually negotiated, evoked, and altered through ongoing interaction. Central to this process are participants in communication, who, through metapragmatic awareness, recognize and retrieve in discourse relevant features that interconnect with context. Likewise, the analyst, by closely attending to textual features that point to or index aspects of context, may retrace how participants orient to, interpret, and dynamically create these same aspects. Yet metapragmatic awareness itself is, theoretically speaking, dynamic and recursive. For instance, a participant may talk about a term’s definition; another participant may then comment on that definition; another participant may then dispute the comment on the definition, and so on (e.g., Berry 2005; Bridges 2017). Given that interpretations of contextualization (either the participant’s real-time ones or the analyst’s retrospective ones) rely on metapragmatic processes, it follows that these interpretations, too, are subject to the same recursive possibilities. As Cook-Gumperz and Gumperz (2011) point out, for example, even the notion of “frame,” itself fundamental for explaining the multifaceted nature of context, is not immune to contextualizing processes. The authors suggest to newly imbue the concept with dynamism and move toward a conceptualization of “framing.” Becoming “part of the communicated message, [framing] can serve to tie together not only linguistic but sociocultural knowledge available in interactive exchange, so taking on part of the previous communicative territory inhabited by many notions of context and contextualization” (Cook-Gumperz and Gumperz 2011: 285). In this sense, the concept itself acquires a “meta” dimension, as participants can utilize their emic understanding of “frames” to achieve their communicative goals.

3.2.4 “Layers” and Dimensions of Context Section 3.2.2 above discussed the role of discourse markers in constructing context, emphasizing their multi-functionality in discourse; as mentioned, in Schiffrin’s terms, discourse markers operate on different “planes of talk.” Postulating levels and more broadly taxonomic divisions of text and context is, in fact, a common feature in discourse-analytic approaches to context as a means for facilitating more detailed analyses. An early example of this approach is Hymes (1974), who developed his influential mnemonic SPEAKING (referring to Setting/Scene, Participants, Ends, Act Sequence, Key, Instrumentalies, Norms, and Genres) so as to group relevant features of context that influence meaning. A similar subdivision of context into dimensions or “layers” may by now be found across theoretical perspectives, where this division often includes contextual parameters that are considered to be “extralinguistic” (see, e.g., Auer 1996; Fetzer 2004).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

3 Context in Discourse Analysis

Within Critical Discourse Studies, Wodak proposes four “heuristic ‘levels of context’” (2011: 628f. and cf. Wodak 2007: 211): the immediate co-text; intertextual/interdiscursive relationships between and within the texts; the extralinguistic social, environmental, and institutional context; and the broader sociopolitical and historical context. Analyzing the linguistic patterns and strategies relevant to each of these four levels reveals how participants strategically make use of, as well as co-construct, relevant contextual features. Wodak’s Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA), furthermore, lends itself to a combination with ethnography (e.g., Clarke et al. 2012), aiding a triangulation of research findings. Establishing findings on multiple different layers of context will strengthen a unified interpretation (Reisigl and Wodak 2001). In practice, this means relying on, and comparing findings among, various research methods and data. Textual analysis may illuminate, for example, how antisemitism is (re)produced in a particular text, while a broader analysis of institutional and legal characteristics, which strictly speaking transcends textual evidence, may demonstrate how this textual reproduction should be understood in its institutional circumstances. Simultaneously, this institutional analysis may strengthen the claims of the textual analysis (Reisigl and Wodak 2001). This type of approach has often been formulated in terms of macro- and micro- levels of context (at times supplemented by a meso-level). Under this formulation, approaches rooted in, for example, Conversation Analysis would be mainly concerned with locally situated aspects of context (see our discussion in Section 3.2.1 of context as co-text), while Critical Discourse Analysis or language-ideological approaches would be concerned with macro-aspects of contexts. These micro- and macro-levels are subsumed, respectively, in Hanks’s (2006: 121) notions of “emergence” and “embedding.” Whereas the former comprises discourse stemming from “production and reception as ongoing processes,” and thus focuses on “context as phenomenal, social, and historical actuality,” the latter draws attention to “the relation between contextual aspects that pertain to the framing of discourse, its centering or groundedness in broader frameworks” (p, 117). This micro/macro distinction has led to several debates on the links between discourse and “macro” aspects, which will be discussed in Section 3.4. At the same time, many have argued that an analysis of context requires moving beyond the distinction, as will be discussed in the following section.

3.2.5 Toward Timescales and Trans-contexts Concurrent with a more detailed focus on participant roles in the dynamic constitution of context, scholars have increasingly focused on metapragmatics and metalanguage (see Section 3.2.3) as the interface that reconciles “decontextualized” language data and the contextual features that make the data meaningfully relevant. These contextual features, moreover, may be wideranging, transcending localized context and participation frameworks and linking up to more macroscopic layers of context.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

77

78

CEDRIC DESCHRIJVER AND ALEXANDRA GEORGAKOPOULOU

Yet the macro–micro divide itself has been criticized as being too simplistic, by not considering the complex ways in which several aspects of context are simultaneously indexed (see, e.g., Goodwin and Duranti 1992). Silverstein (1993), for example, explains that Gumperz’s concept of “conceptualisation cues” may be a “narrow” view of contextualization, still emphasizing denotation and relying on “various assumptions about the effective reduction of social organization to localized agentive interaction based on individual rational (or logically reconstructible) consciousness” (p. 57). According to Silverstein, a wider interpretation of “contextualization” is necessary for accounting for how meaningfully relevant knowledge about culture and language ideology is understood and reproduced. In this wider view, indexicals may point to “figures” or “tropes,” understood as schemata of culture and language ideology, influenced and constituted in turn by earlier interactions and, at times, by non-textual features of the communication. A case in point, discussed by Blommaert (2015a), are internet “memes,” images or other signs that spread fast and widely online, aided by quasi random algorithmic processes. These memes may broadly index a culturally specified “coolness,” while a specific “meaning” is often lacking. Furthermore, this “coolness” schema depends on, and further constitutes, recognizable earlier occurrences of this type of sharing. In this sense, “[w]e are confronted, in every actual example of discourse, by a complex construction of multiple historicities compressed into one synchronized act of performance” (Blommaert 2015b: 113–114), and, as such, “every instance of micro contextualization would at once be an instance of macro contextualization” (p. 108). This renders the erstwhile macro–micro distinction problematic if not obsolete, though at times it may be difficult to avoid the metaphorical description of “layers” of context (see, e.g., the discussion in Collins 2011). Being relatively recent, however, this multidimensional, historicized, and broader view of context cannot yet be said to be uniformly accepted throughout discourse studies. In Silverstein’s view, indexed ideologies are essentially a social byproduct of linguistic action, analyzable through the interface of metapragmatics. In this view, indexical ideological links take precedence over the “conscious reconstruction of some agentively-centered ‘illocutionary event’” (Silverstein 1992: 69), and, as such, over individual cognition involved in language use. Other frameworks, however, have argued that broader, sociocultural frames should precisely be located in individual cognition, rather than being conceptualized as a byproduct of social action. We may compare Silverstein’s approach to, for example, van Dijk’s (2006) socio-cognitive approach to discourse. There, context is defined as “subjective participant interpretations, constructions or definitions of such aspects of the social environment” (p. 163), which include communicative roles as well as social aspects such as gender and class, and, indeed, any ascribable feature of social groups. This socio-cognitive model is not in opposition to constructionist approaches: It does not deny institutionally influenced participant roles, for example, but highlights their potential cognitive construction. The upshot is

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

3 Context in Discourse Analysis

a centrality of the individual in experiencing, assessing, and constructing a dynamic context. Van Dijk (2006: 163) suggests that contexts are not “objective” or “deterministic” constraints of society or culture at all, but subjective participant interpretations, constructions or definitions of such aspects of the social environment. . . . Thus, it is not “objective” gender, class, ethnicity or power that control the production or comprehension of text and talk, but whether and how participants interpret, represent and make use of such “external” constraints, and especially how they do so in situated interaction.

Much like in Silverstein’s analysis, these schemata or constraints are not assumed to be universally valid; only the processes (cognitive or semiotic) by which participants are able to retrieve relevant contextual aspects are. As both Silverstein and van Dijk also acknowledge, the ideologies at play, then, inform the metapragmatic representations of context. The question that remains, however, is how analysts would be best equipped to access these ideologies, a question to which we return in Section 3.4.

3.3 Illustration: Context in Small Stories Research To illustrate the key features of the analysis of context as described above, the current section will discuss a case-in-point framework, developed by one of this chapter’s authors: that of small stories research, a paradigm for analyzing everyday life stories as contextualized activities. The paradigm synthesizes (i) a broad social interactional position on what context is, and how it can be analyzed, and (ii) interactional sociolinguistic and linguistic anthropological insights, so as to produce multi-layered approaches to context. This synthesis attempts both to go beyond the micro/macro dichotomous conceptualization of context and to introduce emic, ethnographically attested insights into the relationships between text and context. The deployment of certain affiliated concepts as analytical means for establishing and accounting for links between linguistic and other semiotic choices in a text and (wider) contexts is a common hallmark of such synthesizing approaches. Indexicality, timescales (Wortham and Reyes 2015), stance (Jaffe 2009), chronotopes (Blommaert and De Fina 2017), and frames (Tannen 1993), among others, are such affiliated concepts for investigating discourse-in-context. These also feature in small stories research. The rationale for developing small stories research was that a range of narrative activities, commonly occurring in everyday conversational contexts, had not been sufficiently studied within narrative studies, nor had their importance for the interlocutors’ identity work been recognized. These involved stories with fragmentation and open-endedness of tellings, exceeding the confines of a single speech event, and resisting a neat categorization of beginning-middle-end. They were heavily co-constructed (see Section 3.2.2),

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

79

80

CEDRIC DESCHRIJVER AND ALEXANDRA GEORGAKOPOULOU

rendering the sole teller’s story-ownership problematic. Small stories served as an umbrella term for “tellings of ongoing events, future or hypothetical events, shared (known) events, but also allusions to tellings, deferrals of tellings, and refusals to tell” (Georgakopoulou 2006: 130). By synthesizing interactional (e.g., Schegloff 1998) with practice-based approaches to context (Hanks 1996; Scollon and Scollon 2004), small stories research has put forward a heuristic for identifying and analyzing the links between the stories as communicative activities, the social worlds in which they are told and which they invoke, and the tellers’ identities. The heuristic, which explores the connections of three separable but interrelated levels of analysis (see also Section 3.2.4), is a flexible way of analyzing stories-in-context: ways of telling-sites-tellers (Georgakopoulou 2007). “Ways of telling” refer to the communicative “how”: the socioculturally shaped and more or less conventionalized semiotic and, in particular, verbal choices of a story. Part of the analysis in this respect involves uncovering iterativity in the types of stories told as recurrent ways of (inter)acting, embedded in recurrent social practices and engendering expectations about the ongoing activity (Georgakopoulou 2013). The stories’ plots, the types of events and experience that they narrate, and the ways in which they are interactionally managed during the telling are all important in this respect. So are the intertextual links of the current story with other, previous and anticipated, stories, as well as the participants’ metapragmatic orientations to such links. “Sites” in the analytical heuristic of “ways of telling-sites-tellers” refer to the social spaces in which narrative activities take place. These include situational context factors, that include physical (e.g., seating arrangements), mediational, and other tools that the participants may employ. This view of sites is informed by practice-based approaches to language and place that argue for a dialectic relationship between them and that view place not as a monolithic, static entity but as a resource for constituting context (see Baynham, 2015). Stories perform actions in situ and they are integrally connected with social practices, with what gets done, how, and by whom in specific places. Sites thus allow us to explore the significance of social spaces not just for the here and now of the telling activities but also for the tale-worlds invoked in the participants’ stories. Finally, “tellers” comprise the participants of a storytelling activity as complex entities: here-and-now communicators with particular roles of participation; characters in their tales; members of social and cultural groups; last but not least, as individuals with specific biographies, including habits, beliefs, hopes, desires, fears, etc. It is apparent then that the “who” and the “what” of storytelling are seen as being fashioned into and shaped by the “how” of storytelling. Stories emerge as situated, dialogic activities, consisting of multiple tellers and orientations to the world, encompassing a variety of discourse activities and fleeting moments, and being transportable in other contexts (Georgakopoulou 2007: 86). Narrative meaning-making is thus seen as contextualized but also as having the potential to be lifted from its original context

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

3 Context in Discourse Analysis

and to be recontextualized, that is, to acquire new meanings in new contexts (cf. Bauman and Briggs 1990). The historicity and circulation of stories become part of the analysis. A multi-layered approach to context instructs us to see the ways in which the three levels above are connected as presenting contingency but also durability: Some relations become conventional and hold above individual contexts of storytelling. Furthermore, ways of telling-sites-tellers are expected to be reconfigured differently in the different recontextualizations of a story across time and space as well as in different environments. As no contextualized analysis of any discourse activity, in this case, stories, can be exhaustive, there is an acceptance that different analyses will have different priorities and that certain questions may require more focus on any one of the three analytical levels. To forge links between the above interrelated levels of storiesin-context, positioning analysis is used (Bamberg and Georgakopoulou 2008; Georgakopoulou 2013). This aids in the identification of contingency as well as iterativity (i.e., systematic recurrence) in how characters are presented in the tale-world (Level 1 in positioning analysis); how a story is locally occasioned and co-constructed by storytelling participants (Level 2); finally, what aspects of the teller(s), events, and narrated experience are presented as holding above and beyond the specific story and as presenting continuity over time and across spaces (Level 3). Ethnographic understandings and tracking of iterative choices have been proposed as primary ways for uncovering the iterativity of such choices, particularly in relation to Level 3 (De Fina 2013; Georgakopoulou 2013, and cf. the DHA in Section 3.2.4).

3.4 A Key Issue: The Delineation of “Context” As the discussion above demonstrates, in broad terms, the varied branches of discourse analysis have converged on certain key approaches in the study of context. The dynamic and interactional nature of context, as well as its potential division into several analytic layers, are by now commonly accepted conceptualizations. Nevertheless, there is still divergence on other issues, the most complicated of which is the delineation of context. There are two main subordinate problems in this respect: (i) how to a priori or a posteriori decide which part of context is relevant to an interaction, and (ii) how to delimit the notion of “context” since, strictly speaking, any facet of human existence may in some way influence situated meaning-making. The first problem has commonly been cited in criticism toward earlier work in Critical Discourse Studies. It was alleged that by preemptively and theoretically characterizing power relations and dominant ideologies, any piece of text or discourse could be made “suspect,” evidencing power relations merely by virtue of the social theory adopted, while at times omitting extralinguistic contextual factors that would affect discourse (see, e.g., Billig 1999; Breeze, 2011). On the opposite side, Conversation Analysis has been criticized for

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

81

82

CEDRIC DESCHRIJVER AND ALEXANDRA GEORGAKOPOULOU

omitting relevant social and institutional features in their interpretation of a single interaction (see Schegloff 1997; Wetherell 1998, and associated debates). Yet, as discussed in Section 3.2.5, the macro/micro distinction that has for long constituted the topic of debate is itself increasingly brought into question, an evolution that may occur in other branches of discourse analysis. Indeed, Blommaert’s chronotopic view of context (Blommaert et al. 2020) builds on that of Silverstein (cf. Section 3.2.5) and lends itself to a comparison with “intertextuality” as a key notion within CDA. In its original formulation, the notion that texts contained multiple voices and historicities was described by Bakhtin (1981) as “heteroglossia.” Commenting on the “macro”/“micro” distinction regarding language and power in society, Fairclough argues that “the former [macro] are both conditions and resources for the latter [micro], and constituted by the latter” (1992: 211). This interrelation is intertextual: Since texts refer to, re-voice, and echo other texts, they inherently refer to specific sociopolitical environments and become relative to others. Rereading Fairclough in light of Blommaert’s diagnosis of the micro–macro issue (and considering Blommaert et al.’s [2020] concepts of “text trajectories” and “data histories”), the concept of “intertextuality” here seems to foreshadow a similar conclusion, though Fairclough does not explicitly reach it. Much like matrices of indexicality would endow localized and situated interactions with macroscopic relevance (in Silverstein’s/Blommaert’s terms), it would, according to Fairclough (1992), be intertextual properties of texts that mediate language and macroscopic context. In this sense, Fairclough (1992) anticipates the more recent views of context discussed in Section 3.2.5. When this line of reasoning is taken to its logical conclusion, context and its shifting, complex intertextual/indexical links may indeed come to saturate any text. An analysis of collected texts and their multiple, complex textual links within a certain discourse would then render a macroscopic description of context. This approach has recently been suggested by Hamann et al. (2019), who complement discourse analysis with the notion of “dispositif.” This Foucauldian concept “link[s] the heterogeneous textual and non-textual context conditions” of discourse production. Its operationalization “pay[s] attention to hierarchies and power structures in institutions, architectural order, regulations and laws, and scientific statements, and so on that together form a network of dispositional elements” (pp. 52–53). The possibility of meaning-making, it is argued, largely depends on these networks, that is, on the dispositif. It should be noted that this context-centered discourse analysis is necessarily interdisciplinary. In Hamann et al.’s (2019) case study of academic discourses, the authors go beyond textual analysis to rely on sociological study and interpretation, as well as on a statistical analysis of indicators of academic career trajectories. Given the preceding discussion, it is no surprise that “context,” defined in this way, is not entirely retrievable in each individual textual instance itself. No single text, after all, could possibly contain all varyingly explicit indexical links pointing to all relevant sociopolitical and institutional features of context.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

3 Context in Discourse Analysis

Nevertheless, this type of analysis is valuable in terms of assessing recurring linguistic features in a particular institutional context, as it illuminates the social bases, and social consequences, of discourse. In this sense, it is also tightly bound up with the second abovementioned issue: that of where to delimit context. The question is whether a “‘free’ contextual account [that] has no obvious boundaries . . . might include a vast sociological, political and anthropological study” of any aspects deemed to be tangentially relevant (van Dijk 2006: 162). Additionally, and keeping in mind the recursivity of context (see Section 3.2.3), any broader (textual and discursive) description of indexically reproduced ideologies is vulnerable to recontextualization. Any recontextualization of these ideologies may then become part of the situated encounter, rather than the ideology primarily functioning as the historical/ indexical background. This recontextualization may hinder strong empirical grounds for claims of an overarching (language) ideology or indexical order. Yet, continued developments in communication may present new opportunities for further research on this issue, as will be explained in the next section.

3.5 Future Avenues for Research: “Mediatization” and Context in Discourse Analysis Of particular importance to future research on context within discourse analysis is the increasingly fragmented nature of communication, especially in online communication. Agha terms this phenomenon “mediatization”: a “commoditization of communication,” where language users are presented with greatly expanded uptake possibilities (including for contextual fragments) (Agha 2011; Deschrijver 2020a). This expansion may also cause a fragmentation of possible contextual features, or even “contexts,” to which participants orient, which in turns makes these less visible to the non-informed (or differently informed) participant or analyst. While earlier work has often characterized online communication as operating in a state of context collapse, with fewer cues being available to communicators to interpret context (Davis and Jurgenson 2014), it may just as well be argued that there is a great expansion of context, due to the fragmentation of the indexical links engendered by different interpretations of contextual cues. Indeed, as Blommaert et al. (2020) convincingly argue, context will continue to be engendered dynamically through participants’ situated encounters with text, containing highly adaptable and fragmented cues. In this respect, the non-retrievability of meaning from textual indicators alone also points to the irreducible role of multi-semiosis and multimodality, which is currently prompting discourse analysts to cross-fertilize with studies of multimodality, as well as expanding their notions of text and context. Jones talks about “polyfocality” (2004), the intricate layering and expansion of multiple co-occurring contexts in online discourse. Arguing that we “pay less attention to texts” (p. 29), Jones proposes a focus on a more widely conceived,

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

83

84

CEDRIC DESCHRIJVER AND ALEXANDRA GEORGAKOPOULOU

socially grounded view of interaction that instead pays attention to highly multimodal and semiotic intervention in meaningful displays of identity, common to computer-mediated communication. Similar concerns have been voiced by Schmitz, who argues that ‘the radical prototypical notion of text (as a self-contained, co-written document dealing with one particular subject)’ is no longer sustainable in an age of electronic communication (2014: 296). In the absence of a clearly defined notion of “text,” it is no surprise that the “text”–“context” interrelation also becomes problematic. Similarly affected will be the process of entextualization, which in its original conceptualization involves “making a stretch of linguistic production into a unit, a text, that can be lifted out of its interactional setting” (Bauman and Briggs, 1990). Through modern communication technologies, this process may become “elongated” (Jones 2009: 297), as texts may continuously garner new and varied uptakes far removed from the original entextualization. Here the issue of delineation of context also acquires new dimensions and prompts a need to clarify the role of each modality in constructing context and their interconnections, a project that would, in many ways, need to build on foundational works in linguistics, philosophy, and semiotics (see Tan et al. 2020: 264ff.). These modalities include embodiment and affect, which are currently being (re-)integrated into discourse analysis of context, picking up on Goffman’s earlier focus on these features of context (see Busch 2020). Though context online is fragmented, scattered, and heterogeneously shared, it has been convincingly shown that this does not present insurmountable problems for online interaction, as interaction only necessitates participants’ innate meaning-making capacities. Participants may strategize to circumvent and navigate context collapse constraints by, for example, doing audience selection, that is, tailoring their messages to address different subsets of their (intended) audiences, including ratifying some more than others (Tagg and Seargeant 2015; Georgakopoulou, 2017a). Similarly, recognizability of social actions (including requests, online trolling, responding to questions, etc.) may develop online among users who may not necessarily share much in the way of prior assumptions or understandings about the discourse, through repeated exposure to specific actions taking place in specific environments (Blommaert et al. 2020). From an emic perspective, in other words, fragmented communication does not present insurmountable problems. Of particular potential for further research is the logical consequence that it will become more difficult, from an etic perspective, to accurately identify the text trajectories and data histories evoked in a particular interaction (Blommaert 2015b). The fact that we may reach an analysis of the interpretation of online, fragmented discourse does not imply that we may reach a (correct) analysis of the historicized (language) ideologies that influence the communication, precisely due to the irretrievability of relevant features of context to one or more participants. This brings into focus the diffuse distinction between “context” (as in discourse-analytic settings above) and

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

3 Context in Discourse Analysis

the extra-textual knowledge analysts rely on to make sense of the interaction. Indeed, researchers themselves may become less immune to their own biases, ideologies, and practices of social media engagement: The algorithmic processes of distribution and amplification that characterize much online communication (Section 3.2.5) may cause the research to inadvertently become part of these same processes. Within discourse analysis, this warrants a deeper conversation about researcher reflexivity, which may aid in clarifying the assemblages that create meaning online (Georgakopoulou 2017b). In general, the increased difficulty of assessing context in online communication lends itself to future research to strengthen discourse-analytic claims about context, as exemplified in the following. It is by now increasingly acknowledged that the early twenty-first-century geopolitical international battlefield is partially waged online, as rapid changes in geopolitical circumstances occur concurrent to evolutions in mass communication, and various state actors may seek to spread their narratives or covertly infiltrate debate through new technologies. An important example here is the Chinese government and associated actors, who seek to influence global debate both “above board” (in newspaper opinion pieces, organizational contacts, etc.) as well as covertly, by, for instance, waging Twitter campaigns with multiple fake accounts, or overwhelming news outlet comment sections with specific discussion points (see, e.g., King et al. 2017; Zhang and Wallis 2021). Crucially, these operations are covert, algorithmically driven, and highly nontransparent to the non-informed observer or participant. In early 2021, for example, a campaign was waged against the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), based on their reporting on certain issues inconvenient to the Chinese state (Zhang and Wallis 2021). Yet the attack did not focus on the reported issues, as such, but rather wished to recast the BBC as spreader of “fake news,” thus tying in with recent liberal-democratic discourses on “fake news” as a danger for democracy. The use of a similar trope obfuscates the vastly different ideological-contextual background that influences the communication of participants such as Chinese state actors. As such, following Blommaert et al. (2020), while participants (and analysts) will, despite a lack of transparency, navigate through dense indexical networks and historical allusions and voices, they may still misidentify the ideological schemata underlying use of “fake news”. Where AI is involved, we may be dealing with synthetic approximations and reworkings of ideological schemata. This example highlights the fact that, for discourse analysts to make claims about (language) ideologies or indexical orders, it may be necessary to rely on knowledge that is outside of the interactions, and not represented by textual traces of indexicality alone. As additional ethnographic research would not be available in this example either, some a priori knowledge about the potential utterer and geopolitical context would be required to reach with reasonable certainty a conclusion about various aspects of context (including institutional and participant context). It is these “grey” or liminal areas that offer abundant opportunities for theoretical research, areas where entirely different (language-)ideological

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

85

86

CEDRIC DESCHRIJVER AND ALEXANDRA GEORGAKOPOULOU

backgrounds collide, where miscommunication and misinterpretation are quasi-inevitable, and where language as a means for communication is stretched beyond a single “communicative event” frame. Despite the massive scale of disinformation operations and the spread of AI, their effects on public opinion are by no means clear. Disinformation may provoke a backlash rather than successfully shift or divide public opinion, while specific language features of AI-generated texts may engender doubts about the text’s provenance and veracity. In this context, and echoing Gumperz’s research on miscommunications (see Section 3.2.3), there is ample scope to investigate the role of individual cognition, as well as the role of various modalities, in recognizing or resisting the manipulative use of tropes, or to investigate the contextual basis of potential resistance of prototypical text trajectories and indexical links. This may in turn illuminate their “regular” functioning. Similarly, this type of research may update analysts’ models of macroscopic context (i.e., dominant worldviews or (language) ideologies). Notions such as “fake news,” “democracy,” “(neo)liberalism,” “socialism,” “human rights,” “freedom,” and so on, are notoriously difficult to define, even within one specific context (see, e.g., “conspiracy theory” in Deschrijver 2021). The fact that their standard “denotation” is not homogeneously shared (Agha 2007) also makes them vulnerable to referential manipulation (see also Deschrijver 2020b, ‘Unstable Terms’), a commonly attested tactic in propaganda (e.g., Kampf 1987). For discourse analysis, the issue raised is one of the empirical bases to make claims about “macro” context (or indexical orders (Silverstein 2003)). For, if a particular description (such as “fake news”) is recognized and resisted by participants as a description that does not accurately reflect what “goes on” in interaction, it raises the question of the basis on which the researcher may apply this description. Claims about macroscopic context, in other words, should be attested by the data, rather than being imputed onto them.

3.6 Conclusion Various branches of discourse analysis have, as described in Section 3.2, reached key insights on context: It is (i) dynamic and interactive, (ii) analyzable through metapragmatic (para)linguistic features (e.g., contextualization cues and discourse markers), which may be recursively embedded, and (iii) analyzable in “layers.” More recent work has emphasized the historicized nature of context, its transportability across different communicative events, and the interconnections of ways of telling, sites of engagement and communicators with different types of positionality, as we showed with the example of the paradigm of small stories research. Finally, the fragmentation and difficulties in delineation of context have been highlighted vis-à-vis new forms of communication, especially on social media. Considering the future tasks sketched in Section 3.5, as well as the theoretical history of context in discourse analysis, the metapragmatic dimension of language use is a good candidate for future research. As described in Sections 3.2.2 and

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

3 Context in Discourse Analysis

3.2.3, metapragmatics has to a large extent defined analyses of context, from earlier 1950s text-context investigations, through to Gumperz’s contextualization cues and Schiffrin’s discourse markers, up to the most recent approaches to context. Its presence in a variety of different theoretical frameworks makes it a key candidate for further theoretical research. Metapragmatic awareness, by the same token, is present in any linguistic communication: Without a metapragmatic function there would be “no framework of structure” that would “regiment indexicals into interpretable event(s) of such-and-such type that the use of language in interaction constitutes” (Silverstein 1993: 37; and see Verschueren 2000). It can also serve as a point of entry into accessing context through discourse in more complex communicative events and situations. As explained in Section 3.5, important contextual aspects may remain covert. But despite this relative obscurity of what is going on, the analyst can rely on the knowledge that metapragmatic awareness underlies the production and reception of discourse, and any discursively mediated aspects of context. This can provide a first key step toward a grounded analysis. The metapragmatic function is not the only candidate for future research on context that will work on the social interactional–cognitive interface. Auer, for example, suggests that many contextualization cues “have a natural inherent meaning base . . . in some universal requirement of human interaction, of the working of the human mind, or of the articulatory and/or auditory mechanisms involved in speech production and perception” (1996: 24). Indeed, a universalist basis from which to investigate dynamically constructed context would be amenable to several theoretical orientations, including cognitive, sociolinguistic, and ethnographic ones. In resolving how the text–context interface functions, especially in highly complex forms of communication, finding what unifies human communication will be an essential step.

References Agha, A. (2007). Language and Social Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Agha, A. (2011). Meet mediatization. Language and Communication, 31, 163–170. Auer, P. (1996). From context to contextualization. Links and Letters, 3, 11–28. Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin (ed. M. Holquist). Austin: University of Texas Press. Bamberg, M., and Georgakopoulou, A. (2008). Small stories as a new perspective in narrative and identity analysis. Text and Talk, 28(3), 377–396. Bar-Hillel, Y. (1954). Indexical expressions. Mind, 63(251), 359–379. Bauman, R., and Briggs, C. L. (1990). Poetics and performance as critical perspectives on language and social life. Annual Review of Anthropology, 19, 59–88. Baynham, M. (2015). Narrative and space/time. In A. De Fina and A. Georgakopoulou (eds.), The Handbook of Narrative Analysis (pp. 117–139). Chichester: Wiley. Berry, R. (2005). Making the most of metalanguage. Language Awareness, 14 (1), 3–20.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

87

88

CEDRIC DESCHRIJVER AND ALEXANDRA GEORGAKOPOULOU

Billig, M. (1999). Conversation Analysis and the claims of naivety. Discourse and Society, 10, 572–576. Blommaert, J. (2015a). Meaning as a nonlinear effect: The birth of cool. AILA Review, 28, 7–27. Blommaert, J. (2015b). Chronotopes, scales, and complexity in the study of language in society. Annual Review of Anthropology, 44, 105–116. Blommaert, J., and De Fina, A. (2017). Chronotopic identities: On the spacetime organization of who we are. In D. Ikizoglu, J. Wegner, and A. De Fina (eds.), Diversity and Superdiversity: Sociocultural Linguistic Perspectives (pp. 1–15). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Blommaert, J., Smits, L., and Yacoubi, N. (2020). Context and its complications. In A. De Fina and A. Georgakopoulou (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Discourse Studies (pp. 52–69). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Breeze, R. (2011). Critical discourse analysis and its critics. Pragmatics, 21(4), 493–525. Bridges, J. (2017). Gendering metapragmatics in online discourse: “Mansplaining man gonna mansplain . . .” Discourse, Context and Media, 20, 94–102. Busch, B. (2020). Discourse, Emotions and Embodiment. In A. De Fina and A. Georgakopoulou (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Discourse Studies (pp. 327–349). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clarke, I., Kwon, W., and Wodak, R. (2012). A context-sensitive approach to analysing talk in strategy meetings. British Journal of Management, 23, 455–473. Collins, J. (2011). Indexicalities of language contact in an era of globalization: Engaging with John Gumperz’s legacy. Text and Talk, 31(4), 407–428. Cook-Gumperz, J., and Gumperz, J. J. (2011). Commentary: Frames and contexts – Another look at the macro-micro link. Pragmatics, 21(2), 283–286. Davis, J. L., and Jurgenson, N. (2014). Context collapse: Theorizing context collusions and collisions. Information, Communication and Society, 17(4), 476–485. De Fina, A. (2013). Positioning level 3: Connecting local identity displays to macro social processes. Narrative Inquiry, 23(1), 40–61. Deschrijver, C. (2020a). Mediatized communication and linguistic reflexivity in contemporary public and political life. In A. De Fina and A. Georgakopoulou (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Discourse Analysis (pp. 687–707). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Deschrijver, C. (2020b). Metalinguistic density as an indicator of sharedness: The case of economic and financial terms in online interaction. Language and Communication, 71, 123–135. Deschrijver, C. (2021). On the metapragmatics of “conspiracy theory”: Scepticism and epistemological debates in online conspiracy comments. Journal of Pragmatics, 182, 310–321. Duranti, A., and Goodwin, C., eds. (1992). Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon (pp. 1–42). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and text: Linguistic and intertextual analysis within discourse analysis. Discourse and Society, 3(2), 193–217. Fairclough, N. (1995). Media Discourse. London: Edward Arnold. Fetzer, A. (2004). Recontextualizing Context: Grammaticality Meets Appropriateness. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Georgakopoulou, A. (2006). Thinking big with small stories in narrative and identity analysis. Narrative Inquiry, 16(1), 122–130.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

3 Context in Discourse Analysis

Georgakopoulou, A. (2007). Small Stories, Interaction and Identities. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Georgakopoulou, A. (2013). Building iterativity into positioning analysis: A practice-based approach to small stories and self. Narrative Inquiry, 23(1), 89–110. Georgakopoulou, A. (2017a). Friends and followers “in the know”: A narrative interactional approach to social media participation. In J. Mildorf and T. Bronwen (eds.), Dialogue across Media (pp. 155–178). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Georgakopoulou, A. (2017b). “Whose context collapse?”: Ethical clashes in the study of language and social media in context. Applied Linguistics Review, 8(2–3), 169–189. Goffman, E. (1964). The neglected situation. American Anthropologist, 66, 133–136. Goffman, E. (1981). Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Goffman, E. [1974] (1986). Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. New York: Harper and Row. Goodwin, C., and Duranti, A. (1992). Rethinking context: An introduction. In A. Duranti and C. Goodwin (eds.), Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon (pp. 1–42). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gumperz, J. J. (1982). Discourse Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hacking, I. (1999). The Social Construction of What? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Halliday, M. A. K., and Hasan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English. Hong Kong: Longman. Hamann, J., Maesse, J., Scholz, R., and Angermuller, J. (2019). The academic dispositif: Towards a context-centred discourse analysis. In R. Scholz (ed.), Quantifying Approaches to Discourse for Social Sciences (pp. 51–87). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Hanks, W. F. (1992). The indexical ground of deictic reference. In A. Duranti and C. Goodwin (eds.), Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon (pp. 43–76). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hanks, W. F. (1996). Language form and communicative practices. In J. J. Gumperz and S. Levinson (eds.), Rethinking Linguistic Relativity (pp. 232–270). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hanks, W. F. (2006). Context, communicative. In K. Brown (ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd ed. (pp. 115–128). Amsterdam: Elsevier. Heritage, J. (1984). Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hymes, D. (1974). Foundations in Sociolinguistics: An Ethnographic Approach. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Jaffe, A., ed. (2009). Stance: Sociolinguistic Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jones, R. H. (2004). The problem of context in computer mediated communication. In P. LeVine and R. Scollon (eds.), Discourse and Technology: Multimodal Discourse Analysis (pp. 20–33). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Jones, R. H. (2009). Dancing, skating and sex: Action and text in the digital age. Journal of Applied Linguistics, 6(3), 283–302. Kampf, H. A. (1987). The challenge of Marxist-Leninist propaganda. Political Communication, 4(2), 103–122. King, G., Pan, J., and Roberts, M., E. (2017). How the Chinese government fabricates social media posts for distraction, not engaged argument. American Political Science Review, 111(3), 484–501.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

89

90

CEDRIC DESCHRIJVER AND ALEXANDRA GEORGAKOPOULOU

Malinowski, B. (1923). The problem of meaning in primitive languages. In C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards (eds.), The Meaning of Meaning (pp. 296–336). New York: Harvest. Martin, J. R. (2003). Cohesion and texture. In D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen, and H. E. Hamilton (eds.), The Handbook of Discourse Analysis (pp. 35–53). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Maschler, Y., and Schiffrin, D. (2015). Discourse markers: Language, meaning, and context. In D. Tannen, H. E. Hamilton, and D. Schiffrin (eds.), The Handbook of Discourse Analysis (pp. 189–221). Chichester: John Wiley and Sons. Ochs, E. (1992). Indexing gender. In A. Duranti and C. Goodwin (eds.), Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon (pp. 335–358). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Reisigl, M., and Wodak, R. (2001). Discourse and Discrimination: Rhetorics of Racism and Antisemitism. London: Routledge. Schegloff, E. (1997). Whose text? Whose context? Discourse and Society, 8, 165–187. Schegloff, E. A. (1998). Reflections on studying prosody in talk-in-interaction. Language and Speech, 41, 235–263. Schiffrin, D. (1987). Discourse Markers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schmitz, U. (2014). Semiotic economy, growth of mass media discourse, and change of written language through multimodal techniques: The case of newspapers (printed and online) and web services. In J. Androutsopoulos (ed.), Mediatization and Sociolinguistic Change (pp. 279–304). Berlin: De Gruyter. Schneider, H. J. (1993). Ausprägungen pragmatischen Denkens in der zeitgenössischen Sprachphilosophie. In H. Stachowiak (ed.), Pragmatik: Handbuch pragmatischen Denkens (Vol. IV, pp. 1–37). Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag. Scollon, R., and Scollon, S. W. (2004). Nexus Analysis: Discourse and the Emerging Internet. London: Routledge. Silverstein, M. (1992). The indeterminacy of contextualization: When is enough enough? In P. Auer and A. Di Luzio (eds.), The Contextualization of Language (pp. 55–76). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Silverstein, M. (1993). Metapragmatic discourse and metapragmatic function. In J. A. Lucy (ed.), Reflexive Language: Reported Speech and Metapragmatics (pp. 33– 58). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Silverstein, M. (2003). Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language and Communication, 23(3–4), 193–229. Tagg, C., and Seargeant, P. (2015). Facebook and the discursive construction of the social network. In A. Georgakopoulou and T. Spilioti (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Language and Digital Communication (pp. 353–367). Abingdon: Routledge. Tan, S., O’Halloran, K., and Wignell, P. (2020). Multimodality. In A. De Fina and A. Georgakopoulou (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Discourse Studies (pp. 263– 281). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tannen, D., ed. (1993). Framing in Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press. van Dijk, T. A. (2006). Discourse, context and cognition. Discourse Studies, 8, 159–177. Verschueren, J. (1999). Understanding Pragmatics. London: Edward Arnold. Verschueren, J. (2000). Notes on the role of metapragmatic awareness in language use. Pragmatics, 10(4), 439–456.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

3 Context in Discourse Analysis

Wetherell, M. (1998). Positioning and interpretative repertoires: Conversation Analysis and post-structuralism in dialogue. Discourse and Society, 9, 387–412. Wodak, R. (2007). Pragmatics and Critical Discourse Analysis: A cross-disciplinary study. Pragmatics and Cognition, 15(1), 203–225. Wodak, R. (2011). Complex texts: Analysing, understanding, explaining and interpreting meanings. Discourse Studies, 13(5), 623–633. Wortham, S., and Reyes, A. (2015). Discourse Analysis beyond the Speech Event. Abingdon: Routledge. Zhang, A., and Wallis, J. (2021). Trigger Warning: The CCP’s Coordinated Information Effort to Discredit the BBC. Canberra: Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

91

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Part II

Philosophical, Semantic, and Grammatical Approaches to Context

Published online by Cambridge University Press

Published online by Cambridge University Press

4 Philosophy of Language and Action Theory María de Ponte, Kepa Korta, and John Perry

4.1 Introduction Language is paradigmatically a human activity, largely consisting of speakers saying things in order to inform, warn, misinform, threat, sell, and so on. Usually, the plans that motivate such utterances include being understood by others and having an effect on their behavior as a result. The use of language belongs squarely in what Frege called the causal realms, the physical and the mental. Language is important because it is a system for doing things. This suggests that the philosophy of action should be a part – a very important part – of the philosophy of language. To a certain extent it is. Charles Morris, in Signs, Language, and Behavior (1946), divided “semiotics,” the study of signs, into three parts: syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.1 Taking language as a system of signs, pragmatics is the study of how language is used, “how to do things with words,” as Austin says. Austin developed his theory of speech acts in the 1950s, and Searle and others have further criticized and developed it (Searle 1985). Speech act theory categorizes and describes actions in terms of what we do to perform them, and what we do in and by performing them. Perhaps by uttering a sentence I say something about a politician (a locutionary act); in saying that, I insult the politician (an illocutionary act); by insulting the politician I annoy his powerful friends (a perlocutionary act), and so on. All of this depends on syntax and semantics to get started, but it is basically pragmatics. A bit later, H. P. Grice (1975) introduced the concept of implicature, which is something conveyed by an utterance beyond the proposition it expresses, We are grateful to the members of the Zoom group of philosophical discussion for their constant inspiration. The first two authors acknowledge two grants, one by the Spanish Government (Grant PID2019-106078GB-I00 funded by MCIN/ AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033) and another from the Basque Government (IT1612-22). We are also grateful to an anonymous referee for their helpful comments. But most of all, the three of us thank the editor Jesús Romero-Trillo for his kind invitation and immense patience. 1 See also Morris (1938). The term “semiotics” is due to Ferdinand de Saussure (1916 [2011]) and was adopted by Charles Peirce (1931–1958); neither used it in exactly the same way Morris did.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

96

MARÍA DE PONTE, KEPA KORTA, AND JOHN PERRY

beyond what the speaker says in uttering a sentence in a certain occasion. You ask me if I am going to a talk by X; I say “X is a complete idiot.” I have not said that I am not going but have implicated that I won’t. This, however, is not a matter of logic; I can consistently “cancel” the implicature by saying, “but I promised Y I would introduce X, so I’ll be there.” Grice intended his influential theory to be a contribution to semantics. He thought that by taking what is implicated to be what is said, we make mistakes about what words and sentences mean. His original targets were claims, “common-place of philosophical logic” (Grice 1975: 22),2 that the truthconditional analyses logic provides for words like “or,” “and,” “if” do not give their meaning in natural language. But the theory of implicatures, regardless of what Grice intended, is a pragmatic theory, a theory of conversation taken as a “collaborative effort” (p. 26), “a special case or variety of purposive, indeed rational, behavior” (p. 28) where participants observe, or can be expected to observe, rational principles and maxims for (cooperative) action. By and large, semantics itself was “utterance-free” until about the middle of the last century. Not that philosophers and logicians were unaware of utterances until then. But the working assumption was that semantics, the study of meaning and reference, should focus on what all utterances of an expression or sentence have in common, due to meaning, and not on how they differ, due to the particular facts of the utterance. In this chapter we first consider how this assumption was challenged when the philosophy of language began to think about natural languages, as opposed to what Frege called “perfect languages.” We discuss how, in the face of these challenges, attempts were made to finesse utterances, in the analyses of names, and indexicals, by creating what one might call “expression-hybrids,” particularly by David Kaplan. While appreciating the brilliance behind these attempts, we express reservations. Then we turn to our own theory, the reflexive-referential theory, which takes utterances as basic to the semantics and pragmatics of natural language.

4.2 Utterances Lost Discussion of utterances is not common in the philosophy of language developed in the first half of the twentieth century, at least in the analytic tradition inaugurated by Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell. The focus was the truthconditions of sentences, and how they were based on the meanings and references of its parts. It was not the utterances of sentences and their parts that were studied, but the expressions themselves, the meanings they have in virtue of the conventions of the language to which they belong, the references they have in virtue of the world, and the truth-values the sentence of which they are parts have in virtue of all of these things. 2

In earlier papers, the targets were claims by Ryle, Malcolm, Wittgenstein, Austin, Strawson, and others, about the meanings of expressions like “X looks φ to A” or “A tried to do x” (see Grice’s “Prolegomena,” in Grice 1989).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

4 Philosophy of Language and Action Theory

In their early works, neither Frege nor Russell were particularly interested in natural languages except as the inspiration for better, more perfect, languages, like Frege’s Begriffschrift, or the language of Whitehead and Russell’s Principia Mathematica were intended to be. They hoped to use these languages to show that arithmetic could be reduced to logic, a doctrine Russell labeled “logicism.”3 While their efforts did not fulfill their logicist ambitions, they produced a revolution in logic that had a profound effect on the next generation of logicians and philosophers of language. Logic was the main interest of Frege and Russell, at least in his early years. Logic is centrally the study of valid inference. This suggests the activity of saying things that are true or are not and of drawing conclusions. But it was not these activities that were the focus, but rather the properties of sentences, considered as abstract objects, independently of their being spoken or written. How can the truth of one sentence, the conclusion, be guaranteed by the truth of others, the premises? Whether the premises are asserted, and if so by whom, when, and where, and whether the asserter is a reliable person with honorable intentions, is not of any interest. The question is whether what the truth of the premises requires of the world guarantees that the requirements for the truth of the conclusion will be met. So, although actual inferences are actions, with all sorts of causes and effects, it is validity as a property determined by structures of an ordered set of sentences that mainly fascinates logicians. And it was topics connected to this issue that dominated the philosophy of language for the first half of the twentieth century, following Frege’s writings on these topics and Russell and Whitehead’s watershed work, Principia Mathematica. Frege and Russell’s ideas about meaning, reference, truth, and the nature of the propositions gave philosophers of language a lot to think about. It was these ideas, often labeled the “Frege–Russell” theory, that dominated the philosophy of language for the first half of the twentieth century. They are still very much present in contemporary discussions, although their effects are somehow mitigated, or at least combined, with the effects of another “trend” that originated a few decades later, which placed the focus on the study of natural language. This trend, championed by philosophers like Strawson, Austin, and Grice, among others, was not concerned with logic (or not merely) or with the development of any formal language, but rather with understanding the ways in which ordinary languages work and the ways speakers use expressions and sentences to do different things. When the attention of many analytic philosophers turned to natural language, the philosophy of action began to intrude into the citadel of the philosophy of language.

3

The origins of the term “logicism” are not clear. Logicism has its origins in Dedekind’s work and, most importantly, on Frege’s. But neither Dedekind nor Frege, as far as we know, used the term. Russell started using it around 1919, and so did Carnap and others.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

97

98

MARÍA DE PONTE, KEPA KORTA, AND JOHN PERRY

4.3 Reference: Natural Language Intrudes From the end of World War II on, philosophers of language paid increasing attention to natural language, and to the extent to which the language of logic can mislead us as to how the corresponding expressions are used in natural language. The later Wittgenstein at Cambridge; Urmson, Austin, Grice, Anscombe, and others at Oxford; Peter Geach at Leeds; Max Black, Norman Malcolm, and Keith Donnellan at Cornell; and many others around the world pursued this theme in various ways, seldom in complete agreement with one another. In common to all was the increased attention to action, “how to do things with words,” in Austin’s phrase. We start by describing the effects of this change of focus to the analysis of singular reference and, specifically, to the classic debates about definite descriptions (which are thought by some to refer, but not by all) and about names and indexicals (which are widely thought to refer to things). We pay special attention to indexicals, which might seem the natural candidates for the philosophy of action to intrude into the philosophy of language.

4.3.1 Definite Descriptions Definite descriptions were an early target of philosophers concerned with natural language. Peter Geach in “Russell’s Theory of Descriptions” (1950) and Peter Strawson in “On Referring” (1950) raised a number of objections to Russell’s theory. Geach focused on Russell’s example, “The King of France is bald,” Strawson on a slight variation, “The king of France is wise.” They raised a number of problems, but both focused on presupposition, a key factor in understanding descriptions in natural language. They both were quite clear that they were doing the philosophy of natural language, a somewhat different project from Russell’s. Geach said: “The incorrectness of Russell’s theory as an account of ordinary language in no way goes against it as a proposed convention of symbolism” (1950: 86). And Strawson also makes it clear that his target is natural language: “I think it is true to say that Russell’s Theory of Descriptions . . . is still widely accepted among logicians as giving a correct account of the use of such expressions in ordinary language. I want to show, in the first place, that this theory, so regarded, embodies some fundamental mistakes” (1950: 321). Geach says that Russell’s theory commits “the fallacy of many questions”: the question “Is the present King of France bald” involves two other questions . . .

(4) Is anybody at the moment a King of France? (5) Are there at the moment different people each of whom is a King of France? The question does not arise unless the answer to (4) is positive and the answer to (5) is negative. (1950: 84–85)

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

4 Philosophy of Language and Action Theory

Geach uses the term “presuppose” for what is going on. And this seems an apt term for the phenomenon Strawson describes: to use such an expression as “The king of France” at the beginning of a sentence was, in some sense of “imply”, to imply that there was a king of France. When a man uses such an expression, he does not assert, nor does what he says entail, a uniquely existential proposition. But one of the conventional functions of the definite article is to act as a signal that a unique reference is being made – a signal, not a disguised assertion. When we begin a sentence with “the suchand-such” the use of “the” shows, but does not state, that we are, or intend to be, referring to one particular individual of the species “such-and-such.” (1950: 331)

Strawson forcefully argued for a distinction between the properties that belong to sentences and expressions – meaning – and properties belonging to utterances or uses of sentences or expressions. It’s clear that it is the speaker who does the presupposing, by uttering a sentence at a certain time in a certain situation.4 If, in Oslo, I tell you “The King of Norway is wise,” I am presupposing that there is such a king. I also presuppose, or at least assume, that you know that Norway is a monarchy. Both presuppositions are acts; I perform these acts by uttering a sentence.

4.3.2

Names Proper names are a nightmare for semantics. If it weren’t for their use in calling the kids for dinner, I’d just as soon junk the whole category. (David Kaplan)5

A natural approach to ordinary proper names is to suppose that they are just words assigned to people and things, and it is those things that they contribute to the truth-conditions of the sentences in which they occur. “Francisco Franco was a dictator” is true because the person “Francisco Franco” stands for a dictator. Sometimes nobles have names that contain more information, but we can just call those “titles” and ignore them for the purpose of logic, a democratic enterprise. That seems to have been Frege’s attitude in the Begriffsschrift. The semantics of a sentence of the form “F(a)” is that it stands for the circumstance that the individual “a” refers to falls under the concept referred to by “F”. But then he saw a problem. Suppose “a” and “b” are two different names for the same object. Then “a = b” and “a = a” will refer to the same circumstance. This didn’t seem right. In the Begriffsschrift, he thought this was a problem with the identity sign “=”, which he jettisoned in favor of “≡”, which stood for a relation between names that had the same referent. But before long he realized that the problem was not with the identity sign, but with identity itself and with what 4

5

To be sure, Strawson’s concept of presupposition, characterized in terms of the conditions for the truth of a statement, is semantic. A pragmatic definition of presupposition, in terms of what the speaker does, is due to Stalnaker (1970). John Perry remembers Kaplan saying this, or words to this effect, on several occasions. We have not been able to find a textual reference.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

99

100

MARÍA DE PONTE, KEPA KORTA, AND JOHN PERRY

he called “cognitive content” (de Ponte et al. 2021). Consider “Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn” and “Samuel Clemens wrote Huckleberry Finn.” Both sentences are true, for “Mark Twain” and “Samuel Clemens” are two names for the same person. But a rational and semantically competent speaker might accept “Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn” while rejecting, or at least having doubts about “Samuel Clemens wrote Huckleberry Finn.” At this point Frege made his distinction between sense and reference ([1892] 1948). Expressions have a sense assigned to them by the conventions of the language of which they are a part. The sense is a set of conditions that an object must fulfill to be the reference of the expression. Expressions with different senses can have the same reference. So “the first planet to appear in the evening sky” and “the last planet to disappear from the morning sky” both refer to Venus, which satisfies both conditions. Names are assigned senses which, at least in all the examples Frege ever gave us, can be captured with definite descriptions. So, in ancient Babylonia, the name “Phosphorus” might be assigned to the condition of being the last planet to disappear in the morning sky, while “Hesperus” is assigned to being the first planet to appear in the evening sky.6 The two names have different senses, but the same reference. As a result, sentences containing them have different cognitive content, or, as modern philosophers of language want to put it, different cognitive significance. So Frege’s distinction between sense and reference seems capable of dealing with differences in cognitive significance. Russell’s theory, which takes names to be abbreviated descriptions, would not have problems with it either. Until the 1950s and 1960s, there was a general consensus on how singular terms, like names and definite descriptions, refer. Definite descriptions refer by describing objects, and names refer by having descriptions associated to them, or by abbreviating those descriptions. But that consensus was broken by ideas championed by “referentialists,” as we will call them; philosophers like Ruth Barcan Marcus (1961), Dagfinn Føllesdal ([1966] 2004), Keith Donnellan (1966, 1970), Kaplan (1989), and, perhaps most importantly, Saul Kripke (1980), who argued that proper names were “rigid designators”: expressions that pick up an object independently of any description, and which pick up the same object in every possible world.7 The label “referentialism” encodes ideas about two different issues (Martí 1995): the mechanism of reference and the contribution of reference. According to referentialists, a name refers to an object by picking it out through an assignment of the expression to the individual: a tagging of sorts. There is no associated sense, description, or identifying condition. The mechanism of reference is a bit more complex and usually involves a causalhistorical process that links the name with the object. 6

7

We are cheating a little to make our life simpler, since the Babylonians did not know that Hesperus and Phosphorus were planets. See Wettstein (1986) who famously called these ideas “the new theory of reference.” As early as 1961, Føllesdal used the phrase “genuine singular terms” for rigid designators ([1966] 2004).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

4 Philosophy of Language and Action Theory

Referentialism, at least with regard to the contribution of reference, is quite similar to the view defended by Frege in the Begriffsschrift. And, as Frege’s early view, it faces the problem of accounting for cognitive significance. For the referentialist view, “Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn” and “Samuel Clemens wrote Huckleberry Finn” express the same singular proposition, one involving a person who happened to have two names, and that person having written Huckleberry Finn. But then, if they both express the same singular proposition, how is it that a person who knows that “Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn” learns something when she is told that “Mark Twain” is “Samuel Clemens”? And what is it that she learns? Discussions of names, or singular reference in general, are usually regarded as discussions in semantics. But the problem of cognitive significance is very closely connected with pragmatics. The things we do with words, the speech acts we perform, and the effects these acts have on others, depends greatly on the singular terms we use to refer. Even if “Mark Twain” and “Samuel Clemens” refer to the same man (as does “the author of Huckleberry Finn”), the use of one or other name (or definite description) will have a significant impact on the situation in which they are used. Whether the speaker uses one name or the other depends on her communicative intention, and which name she uses will have a quite different effect on the hearer.

4.3.3 Indexicals In “On Denoting” Russell does not start with the example, “The King of France is bald” but rather “The present King of France is bald” (our italics.) There were many Kings of France, some no doubt bald. But there was no King of France in 1905. In the parts of the essay where Russell explains how the meaning of the expressions contribute to the meanings of the sentence in which the description is contained, he leaves out the word “present.” If we say “The present President of the US was born in Pennsylvania,” we identify Joe Biden by the job he has as we write, and predicate something true of him. “Present” seems to be an indexical, referring to the period of time we write, late in 2021. Similarly, if we say “In 2011 the present president was vicepresident,” our description refers to Joe Biden and says something true about him. In a later paper, “Mr. Strawson on Referring” (1957), Russell, answering Strawson, claims that he did not discuss “present” because he was concerned with definite descriptions and not with the “problem of egocentricity,” a problem, he claims, he had already discussed in previous works. To use his own self-citation, in Human Knowledge, he claims: When a word is not egocentric, there is no need to distinguish between different occasions when it is used, but we must make this distinction with egocentric words, since what they indicate is something having a different relation to the particular use of the word. (1948: 107)

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

101

102

MARÍA DE PONTE, KEPA KORTA, AND JOHN PERRY

Russell clearly acknowledged the role of indexicals, and their importance. And so did Frege, who admitted that indexical expressions pose a special problem for his theory of the sense and reference of sentences; that sentences containing indexicals require “the knowledge of certain accompanying conditions of utterance”; without those conditions, “the mere wording . . . is not the complete expression of the thought” ([1918] 1967: 24). Neither Russell nor Frege, however, developed their insights, and they are mainly of interest with respect to Frege or Russell interpretation. The fact remains that they did not develop the required semantic tools to deal with them. There seems to be no way that indexicals such as “I,” “now,” and “present” can be handled with the sparse semantical apparatus Russell provides. We have an expression, “present.” It means something, as Russell uses the terms “means,” in the sense that there is a period of time, the period in which we are writing this essay, that contributes to the truth-conditions of the sentence in which it occurs. But referring to this period of time is not a property of the word “present.” It is a property our utterance of the word “present,” the time at which that event occurred. Strawson points out that his distinctions among sentences/expressions, utterances of sentences/expressions, and uses of sentences/expressions are undeniable when we consider sentences containing indexicals. The sentence “I am hungry now” has a meaning that any competent speaker of English is attuned to. But the sentence, qua sentence, is neither true nor false, since the words “I” and “now,” qua words, do not have a reference. We need to consider utterances of the sentence – that is, particular acts8 of uttering the sentence – a speaker and its time of occurrence, to assign references and, eventually, a truth-value to the utterance. Indexicals – or, “egocentric particulars,” as Russell called them – were promptly admitted to be clear cases of content-sensitivity. In the 1970s Kaplan (1989) formulated an elegant formal theory of indexicals, based on intuitions about the meaning and truth of sentences containing them that are pretty undeniable. Basically, the meaning of indexicals – their “characters” – are functions from “contexts” to references of the sort their grammatical type requires. For Kaplan, the context of an expression is a quadruple of a (potential) speaker, location, time, and possible world. Suppose that Ethel says to Fred, in the afternoon of November 1, 2021: “You must fix dinner today. I have a paper to finish. And I fixed dinner yesterday. So it’s your turn. You’ll find the groceries here, in this bag.” And then suppose that the next day Fred uses the very same sentence to tell Ethel that it is her turn to fix dinner. In the first case the uses of “I” refer to Ethel. The uses of “you” refer to Fred. Uses of “today” refer to November 1, those of “yesterday” refer to October 31. “Here” refers to the kitchen, where Ethel is standing, and “this bag” refers to 8

As we use the terms, acts are particular events, actions are properties or types of such events. Agents perform actions at times, thereby producing acts. The act produced is often designated with a gerund phrase that specifies the agent, time, and action: “Fred’s swimming across the lake earlier this morning.” We basically adopt Goldman’s A Theory of Human Action (1970) account of action, with some changes in terminology. For more about the theory of action, see Anscombe ([1957] 2000), Bratman (1987), Davidson ([1980] 2001), and Grice (1971).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

4 Philosophy of Language and Action Theory

the bag she is indicating at that moment. If, on the other hand, Fred had said the exact same thing to Ethel, while he was standing in the living room holding a different bag, the truth-conditions of his utterance would be quite different, even though the meanings of the words were the same. Indexicals might seem a natural place for the philosophy of action to stick its nose under the tent occupied by the philosophy of language. When we consider indexicals, it becomes clear that in many cases meaningful sentences with their meaning will not get us all the way to reference and truthconditions. It seems that, as Strawson suggested, we need to consider utterances of sentences and expressions. But Kaplan did not present his account as a move toward integrating the philosophy of language and the philosophy of action. His aim was to develop a logic of indexicals and demonstratives. He wanted to show the flexibility of logic, rather than its limits. The present authors think he succeeded in this endeavor. But in doing so, he raised issues that help us to understand the referential role, not only of indexicals and demonstratives in natural language, but also of names and definite descriptions, in the context of action. Any utterance has countless properties. But for the basic indexicals “I,” “here,” and “now,” three parameters suffice to determine reference: the speaker, the time, and the location. Call these the “bare context” of an utterance. An utterance of “I” refers to the speaker; and utterance of “now” to the time, and an utterance of “here” to the location. For “you” we need to bring in the audience, and perhaps those in the audience that speaker takes himself to be addressing. That is, the speaker intention is relevant. We need to add more and more facts to our utterance. But they all derive, it seems, from properties of the utterance. Indexicals and demonstratives determine reference and truth-condition relative to such contexts. These don’t have to be the speaker, time, and location and circumstances of any actual utterance. But if the speaker is in the location at the time, the context is proper. Consider the following sentence: (1)

You are right about everything we have ever disagreed about.

Let the speaker be John Searle, and the time be November 1, 2021. The location isn’t that relevant, but for the record, let us say it is a pub in Berkeley. The circumstances include John Perry being the person to whom the remark is directed. The sentence is true if, as of November 1, John Perry is right about everything he and Searle have ever disagreed about up to that point. As we write, it is late in the evening November 1, and John Perry is not in a pub in Berkeley talking to John Searle, pleasant as that would be. No utterance of (1), with Searle as speaker and Perry as audience has ever occurred, or is likely to ever occur. Still, we can assess the proposition that would be expressed with the sentence given these parameters. (It would no doubt be false.) So, if we take our subject matter to be sentences in such contexts, as Kaplan did, we can have a sensible concept of the logic of demonstratives and indexicals. A sentence is a logical truth, in the logic of demonstratives, if it is

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

103

104

MARÍA DE PONTE, KEPA KORTA, AND JOHN PERRY

true in any proper context. Kaplan’s example of a theorem in the logic of demonstratives: “I am here now.” An argument will be valid if relative to the same context; truth of the premises guarantees truth of the conclusion. So “You live in Palo Alto, Palo Alto is in California, so you live in California” is valid. And validity may be achieved by additional premises, relating parameters of the contexts. Kaplan took sentences-in-context as the subject matter, which sounds like the formal equivalent of possible utterances. But he did not put utterances at the center. Perry used Kaplan’s work to argue that there were profound difficulties in treating indexicals and demonstratives within a Fregean framework. Eventually he concluded that in order to understand the role of sentences with demonstratives and indexical in action, in particular the role of “I” in expressing self-knowledge, we needed to take a step further than Kaplan had and take utterances to be the primary subject matter. The result of this was the reflexive-referential theory.9 The main departure from Kaplan’s proposal is that, rather than modeling utterances in terms of expressions and contexts, the reflexive-referential theory brings utterances to the fore: it is, actually, a theory about utterances or, more generally, about cognitive episodes. Cognitive episodes are particular types of acts that happen during an interval of time that can be pretty short – in the case of utterances or perceptions – or relatively long – in the case of beliefs, desires, or intentions. We call them “cognitive” because they are intentional and all have contents, which encode the conditions that make them true, satisfied or fulfilled. We will be mostly concerned here with utterances, which are acts of using language, with different contents and properties, all of them causally relevant. By focusing on utterances, rather than modeling them away, we somehow divert from the tradition started by Frege and Russell and continued by Kaplan, and follow instead a tradition originated in the philosophy of language that took language as action, championed by John Austin and Paul Grice. This tradition, however, focused on the study of speech acts and implicatures, and left pretty much aside the study of issues regarding reference and cognitive significance. In other words, pragmatics started as far-side pragmatics – the study of issues that goes beyond saying, such as illocutionary acts and implicatures – leaving near-side pragmatics – the study of the facts that determine what the speaker says, such as reference – to semanticists.10 Austin–Grice is where philosophy of language meets the philosophy of action, producing pragmatics, and Perry is where pragmatically oriented philosophy of language comes to look back at issues of reference and cognitive significance or, if you prefer, where Austin–Grice turned to look back to Frege–Russell.

9

10

The reflexive-referential was developed in Perry’s Reference and Reflexivity (2001 [2012]), in Korta and Perry’s Critical Pragmatics (2011), and in Korta and Perry’s (2013). This chapter heavily relies on the ideas presented in Critical Pragmatics, where the idea of language as action and pragmatic aspects of the theory are extensively explored and discussed. See also de Ponte et al. (2020). On the distinction between near-side and far-side pragmatics, see Korta and Perry (2020).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

4 Philosophy of Language and Action Theory

4.4 The Reflexive-Referential Account The reflexive-referential account focuses on episodes: utterances, thoughts, perceptions, acts, beliefs, desires, intentions, etc. These things occur in space and time and have causes and effects. We take the relevant utterances to be intentional acts and so call all such episodes “cognitive.” Cognitive episodes have contents. The truth-conditions of a statement or a belief are the paradigm case, but promises and intentions have fulfillment conditions, orders and desires have satisfaction conditions, and so forth. We use “contents” for all such conditions. Contents can be thought of as propositions that encode the conditions of truth for statements, conditions of satisfaction for expressions of hopes and desires, conditions of compliance for orders, and so forth. We take propositions to be abstract objects that are useful for classifying episodes in terms of their conditions of truth, satisfaction, and compliance. We agree with Frege that propositions (“Thoughts”) are not mental or physical episodes or states and so have no causes or effects. We do not, however, accept everything Frege says about propositions. We cannot, for instance, regard mental states, such as belief, desire, and the like, merely as relations to abstract objects, for beliefs and desires have causes and effects. We think that propositions are abstract objects that have been designed to be useful in classifying events in the causal realm. To be useful, such propositions need to be well-behaved and well-understood abstract objects, usually sets. The language that is used for propositions needs to be correlated with the elements of utterances and thoughts that determine their truth-conditions. Sentences play a major role in identifying these elements in the case of utterances and thoughts that can be expressed with sentences. On the reflexive-referential account cognitive episodes have multiple consistent layers of content that can be classified with propositions.11 Consider the follow example. Robyn and Fred are old friends, but up to now they’ve always lived in different cities. Today, however, Robyn has just moved into Fred’s neighborhood in San Francisco. Suppose this is all happening on June 12, 2021, in a particular neighborhood in San Francisco, say, in the Mission. Robyn knocks on Fred’s door and says to Fred, “Today you and I are neighbors.” Call that utterance u. Then on many accounts, Robyn said the proposition P: that Robyn is Fred’s neighbor on June 12, 2021. On a simple account this proposition is a set consisting of the relation of x being a neighbor of y at t; and the sequence of Robyn, Fred, and June 12, 2021. One might take it to be the set of possible worlds in which Robyn be Fred’s neighbor on that day. Or perhaps the set of worlds w in which Robyn’s counterpart in w be a neighbor of Fred’s counterpart in w on that day, or perhaps its counterpart. Indeed, there are many kinds of abstract objects philosophers have taken to be propositions. 11

Somehow confusingly, the reflexive-referential explanation has been labeled as “multi-” or “pluri-propositionalism.” But, since in our account propositions are not the (main) constituents of cognitive episodes, but rather abstract tools to classify the variety of contents, we prefer avoiding this label.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

105

106

MARÍA DE PONTE, KEPA KORTA, AND JOHN PERRY

We’ll stick with the simple account and assume that the reader gets the general idea. We agree that the proposition P is a truth-condition of Robyn’s utterance. But we don’t agree that it is the truth-condition. On our account, attributions of truth-conditions are ascribed to an utterance relative to what is taken as given. The truth-condition of an utterance, relative to a set of facts g, is what else has to be the case for the utterance to be true, given g. With regard to Robyn’s utterance, we gave you the facts that determined the references of the parts of his utterance. “I” referred to Robyn, “you” referred to Fred, “today” referred to June 12, 2021, the language was English, so “are neighbors” refers to the relation, between two or more people, of living near to. Given all these facts, what else has to be the case for Robyn’s utterance to be true is P: that Robyn is Fred’s neighbor on June 12, 2021.

Now suppose we didn’t bother to tell you when this all happened. Do you know conditions of truth of Robyn’s utterance? Of course you do. Robyn’s utterance is true iff P′: there is some day d during which the utterance occurred, and Robyn and Fred were neighbors on d.

Suppose we also didn’t tell you who answered the door. Then you know that the utterance is true iff P″: there is a day d and a person y such that Robyn was talking to y at the time of the utterance, and Robyn and y were neighbors on that day.

Note that P′ and P″ put conditions on the utterance itself: we call them reflexive or utterance-bound truth-conditions. In contrast, P puts conditions only on the items referred to by the utterance. P gives the referential truthconditions of the utterance. P could be true if the utterance had never been made. But not P′ and P″. These three propositions are different and independent. But they are consistent. P′ follows from P″ when we add the fact that the door answerer was Fred. P follows from P′ when we give the date. Having different propositions, classifying different and incremental truthconditions, is useful for many things. To begin with, of course, it gives a comprehensive account of what needs to be the case for a particular utterance to be true and of the several layers included in what is said by it. With this explanation at hand, it is quite easy to deal with puzzles in philosophy of language, such as the puzzles mentioned above involving names. Let us look at a couple more examples, to see how it works. Bob puts a big platter of kale before his young children and says: “You will love this kale.” He knows his children have never seen this ugly vegetable before. But he thinks they will learn the name for this vegetable from his utterance. They will realize that his utterance is true iff there is some stuff Bob is referring to with “this kale” and they will love it. They realize that “kale,” in

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

4 Philosophy of Language and Action Theory

the singular phrase “this kale,” is most likely a name of the kind of stuff he is pointing at. That is, they know how English works. They do not know this in the way people who have taken a linguistics or a philosophy of language class know it. They may not know what an utterance is, or what referring is, or what a singular term is. But they are attuned to these facts about English and are capable of making inferences from them, without being able to articulate the premises of their reasoning. What explains their inference is an utterancebound content of Bob’s utterance, given the meaning of the sentence and the fact, conveyed by glance and gesture, that he was referring to the green stuff on the platter. Given all that what else had to be the case for Bob’s utterance to be true? That “kale” is a name for the ugly green stuff. Note that in this case Bob succeeds in teaching his children something, that “kale” names kale, even though what he says is almost certainly false. John tells Frenchie he is going to San Sebastián in the Basque Country for a week. She looks at the map of the Basque Country in John’s office for “San Sebastián” but cannot find it. He says, “San Sebastián is Donostia.” Frenchie finds “Donostia” on the map, points to it, and says, “That’s where you are going?” and John says “yes.” John has conveyed to Frenchie that “Donostia” and “San Sebastián” are names for the same city. But what he said was simply that San Sebastián was Donostia, a necessary truth, which is the same thing he would have said with “San Sebastián is San Sebastián” and “Donostia is Donostia”, if what is said is always to be identified with referential content. But those utterances would not have been helpful. A philosophical rule of thumb should be that utterances of identity sentences can almost never be understood simply in terms of their referential content. If you insist on doing that, you will be lucky to get much of anything right. The reflexive-referential theory not only accepts and accommodates the intrusion of the theory of action into the philosophy of language but also takes the theory of action as fundamental to understand how language works. We claim that a theory like this, with utterances at the center and considering them as episodes, that is, as cognitive acts with a variety of contents, is better equipped to deal with the context-sensitivity of language than theories that take (one single) content to be a property of sentences plus contexts.

4.5 Utterance versus Sentence-in-Context Kaplan discusses utterances to motivate his theory, but he does not bring them into his theory as such; they are replaced by, or perhaps modeled as, pairs of expressions and contexts: “expressions-in-context.” Kaplan’s main interest was developing a logic of demonstratives and indexicals. For this purpose he regarded utterances as an unnecessary complication. For one thing, a pair of context and expression can have a content, even if the speaker of the context does not utter the expression at the time and place of the context in the world under consideration. More importantly, utterances take time; the validity of an

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

107

108

MARÍA DE PONTE, KEPA KORTA, AND JOHN PERRY

argument with one hundred steps might depend on the context being the same for all of them, but we can’t talk or write that fast. So, for logical purposes, utterances can get in the way. From the point of view of understanding the relations between the contents of states and their causal roles, however, it is very helpful to have episodes that have contents, have causes, and have effects. So, in a theory of language framed in a theory of action, episodes and, in particular, utterances are too important to ignore, in spite of the complications they pose for logic. For this purpose, we consider the elements of Kaplan’s contexts to simply be properties of utterances, which objects fill the roles of speaker-of, timeof, and location-of. The fact that utterances have speakers and occur in locations at times clearly inspired Kaplan’s concepts of context and character. We promote these inspiring episodes to first-class status. The chief advantage of this view is simply that it accounts for – and makes use of – the fact that utterances have many other properties, in addition to having speakers, locations, and times, that can be relevant to understanding their cognitive significance. Consider Gricean intentions, which are basically intentions to produce concrete utterances in order to achieve certain effects on the hearer by the recognition of those intentions. The meaning of the sentence and expressions uttered, the content uttered, and the elements of Kaplan’s context all contribute to that goal. But they are not enough. Conversations, linguistic transactions, fundamentally involve a speaker, who intends to do something and achieve certain effects by uttering a sentence or an expression, and a hearer, who perceives an event (or a token of such event) and needs to reason about the intentions behind it. Properties associated with meaning and content are key to guessing intentions, but not only. On many occasions, the hearer has to interpret what the speaker is trying to do by producing an utterance, and not only what she says. The hearer, that is, needs to know if the speaker intends to command something, amuse, impress, mislead, etc. One way to handle these, while sticking with Kaplan’s approach, is to add more members to the context set, or to introduce additional sets. The latter is more or less the approach of Jon Barwise and John Perry in Situations and Attitudes (1983). On their “relational theory of meaning,” the meaning of a sentence is taken to be a relation among various situations connected to an utterance, although the utterance itself is, as in Kaplan’s theory, only modeled and not introduced directly into the theory. The basic relation is between the utterance situation, which determines the speaker, location, and time, and, in lieu of propositions, described situations. But various other situations are added to the range of the relation, to deal with names, descriptions, ambiguity, and other phenomena. On the reflexive-referential account, however, the treatment of such factors is simpler and more straightforward. They are all properties of the utterance, recognized as necessary to handle various phenomena. The reflexivereferential theory inherits a key insight of Kaplan’s theory – and Perry’s earlier

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

4 Philosophy of Language and Action Theory

views – but the inclusion of utterances gives it, at least, one important advantage.12 The inherited key insight is the distinction between different ways in which information can be discovered, believed, and asserted. The advantage is, briefly, that the cognitive significance of an utterance for different hearers can depend on the perceptual and causal relations the hearer has to the utterance, which reference-determining facts they know, and how they think of them. To account for this, we need to bring in additional properties of the utterance and, in particular, causal properties. These are not modeled by Kaplan’s expressions-in-context. This advantage is particularly relevant for us here, since it offers a solution to the cognitive significance problem without having to renounce to the referentialist insights.

4.6 Cognitive Significance Consider a classical puzzle in semantics. In his important essay “Has Semantics Rested on a Mistake?” (1986), Howard Wettstein pointed out that whatever virtues of what he called the “Kaplan–Perry” account has in explaining cognitive significance of cases involving indexicals, it does not handle Frege’s Begriffsschrift ([1879] 1967) problem, the origin of worries about cognitive significance, which involves proper names. “Hesperus is Hesperus” and “Hesperus is Phosphorus” clearly have different cognitive significance; one learns from the second that the names co-refer, but not from the first. On a directly referential account of proper names, which is more or less what Frege had in the Begriffsschrift, this is hard to account for. On Kaplan’s account, the character of a proper name is a constant function, from any context to the bearer of the name. The two sentences have the same content, a singular proposition to the effect that Venus is Venus. So, whatever the virtues of the Kaplan–Perry thesis for cases involving indexicals, it does not help with proper names. In response to Wettstein’s essay, Perry (1988) introduced the concept of the proposition created by an utterance, in contrast with the proposition expressed by an utterance, which was basically the distinction between reflexive and referential content. On the reflexive-referential account, the two utterances have different reflexive truth-conditions. The first is true if and only if there is an object named by “Hesperus” which is self-identical. The second is true if and only if there is such an object, and there is also an object named by “Phosphorus,” and the objects are identical. So, even though the referential truth-conditions of the two utterances are the same, they differ in cognitive significance, in virtue of their different reflexive truth-conditions.13 12

13

There is second important advantage, which concerns Prior’s well-known root-canal example and his utterance of “Thank goodness that’s over!” See de Ponte et al. (2020) for a discussion of both advantages. See also Corazza and Korta (2015).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

109

110

MARÍA DE PONTE, KEPA KORTA, AND JOHN PERRY

Consider now a puzzle involving reference to time. This puzzle involves dates, which are akin to names, and temporal indexicals, such as “today” or “tomorrow.” It is quite common, at least for some of us, not to know the day one lives in. In this case, however, we certainly know when we live; we know that what is happening is happening now or today, even though we do not know what time is “now” or what day is “today.” Also, it is relatively common to be wrong about the date one lives in. One can be in a dateless haze without knowing it; that is, one can be quite certain about the date, but be wrong. In such a case, it is natural to think, in retrospect, that one might have been correct; even that one’s false belief was justified. This provides another advantage for the reflexive-referential theory with respect to Kaplan’s. Suppose John and Dan are planning to go to the Giants game on August 22, 2021. The day before, John types out a reminder: “The Giants game is tomorrow. Don’t forget.” But he forgets to hit the “send” button. He notices that the message has not been sent just before retiring and hits the button. But he doesn’t notice that it is already after midnight. Dan, a dateless-hazer, sees the reminder, “The Giants game is tomorrow,” when he wakes up on August 22, and sees that date on the email heading. He knows that the game is on August 22, and reasons, given John’s notorious reliability, “Today must be August 21.” He then immerses himself in linguistic esoterica until late in the evening, when John calls and says, “You missed the game!” Dan thought, on August 22, that it was August 21. He had good reason for this belief. The game was scheduled for August 22. John said, in an email this morning, that the game was tomorrow. John is very reliable. Therefore, today must be August 21. Could Dan have been right? It seems not, because for his belief to be true, August 22 would have to be August 21, which is not possible. Surely had Dan said, (4) August 22 is August 21. we could diagnose some kind of irrationality (or assume he is making some subtle linguistic point). But if he just says, as he did: (5) Today is August 21. on August 22, this does not seem like the right diagnosis. There is a way in which way Dan’s utterance could have been true: if it had occurred on August 21 rather than August 22. In other words, if the role of time-of for the utterance of “today” had been filled by some moment occurring on August 21, the utterance would have been true. On the expression-in-context approach, this does not seem like an option. Since the pair of expression and context is individuated by its members, we would not have the same pair if the time of the context was August 21. So, we have another advantage for the reflexive-referential theory and for granting utterances first-class status in the semantics of tense and indexicals.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

4 Philosophy of Language and Action Theory

There is a possible objection to our strategy, as Richard Vallée has pointed out.14 One theory of events is that they are individuated by the time at which they occur, by where they occur, and by which object and properties involved. If we accept this account of event individuation, the reflexive-referential account is no better off than the expressions-in-context account. But we reject this account of the individuation of events. In our opinion, it is a plausible account of the individuation of facts, but not of events. Being a fact is a property of whatever one takes to serve as possibilities, be it circumstances, state of affairs, or whatever. We will not here develop an account of events, which we regard as very basic elements of reality. But we think an adequate account must allow for counterfactuals of the form, “if the election had occurred two weeks earlier, Clinton would have won,” or, to follow with our example, “if Dan’s utterance had occurred on August 21, he would not had missed the Giant’s game.” It is a fact that he missed it and that he made his utterance on August 22. Nothing can change that. But the episodes involved, Dan’s belief and Dan’s utterance “Today is August 21” could have been true, had they occurred on August 21. In his paper “Frege on Demonstratives” (1977), Perry introduced the example of Heimson, who thought he was David Hume. Let’s suppose instead that Heimson thought he was Bob Dylan, which will make it easier to make a case for his rationality. Here is the background story. Heimson falls, hits his head, and has amnesia as a result. He does not know who he is. He carries no identification. He awakes in a hospital where no one has any idea who he is. Heimson decides to figure out who he is. Heimson’s amnesia is of a rather peculiar sort; he retains “third-person” memories about lots of people, he simply does not remember which of them he is. He assumes he is one of the people about whom he knows a great deal. He notices that he knows all of Bob Dylan’s songs by heart, the date of every concert where he performed, and loads of other things. He also knows a lot about a fellow named “Heimson,” but not nearly as much as he knows about Dylan. He decides he is Dylan, and thinks, with some confidence, “I am Bob Dylan.” His thought cannot be true. Indeed, it seems necessarily false. But it might be rational. And we think it does get at a possibility, even if a rather remote one. The possibility is found at the reflexive level. Call his thought – the event of thinking, the episode, not its content – T. If Bob Dylan had the thought T, rather than Heimson, T would be true. This is the possibility that Heimson’s sifting of the evidence available to him led him to think this was the case. David Lewis (1979), considering Perry’s original example, comes to the opposite conclusion. In “Frege on Demonstratives,” Perry advocated a version of the Kaplan–Perry view, that he called the two-tiered view. In a nutshell, to deal with the attitudes we need to recognize two levels of content for beliefs. What is believed is a proposition, often a singular proposition. How it is believed corresponds to character (Kaplan) or role (Perry). 14

Personal communication.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

111

112

MARÍA DE PONTE, KEPA KORTA, AND JOHN PERRY

Lewis had nice things to say about this account but thought that the level corresponding to character or role could serve as what is believed, and the upper tier could be jettisoned. Lewis noted that a character, a function from contexts to propositions, could be regarded as a property: The property an agent has at a time iff the character, applied to that agent and time, yields a true proposition. So, when JP says, “I am sitting,” he “self-ascribes” the property Psitting: Psitting = the property x has iff the character of “I am sitting,” with arguments x and t, yields a true proposition, that is, the property someone x has at time t, iff x is sitting at t.

On Lewis’s view, properties, rather than propositions, are the true “objects” of beliefs. A belief consists of an agent at a time self-ascribing a property. Lewis’s view, like the Kaplan–Perry approach, does not involve episodes. We have agents, times, the relation of self-ascription, and properties. Lewis (1979, footnote 16) regards singular propositions and “de re” beliefs as unnecessary intrusions into the theory of the attitudes based on preoccupation with the analysis of our customs for reporting beliefs. Lewis’s view incorporates much of the traditional picture that belief is a relation between an agent at a time and a proposition. His innovation is to replace propositions with properties. But we think the idea of objects of beliefs in this sense is a mistake. A belief consists in an agent at a time being in a mental state, an episode. This episode has truth-conditions, which can be characterized by propositions, many different propositions, depending on what is taken as given. But neither propositions, nor characters, nor characters construed as properties, are objects of belief in the sense that belief consists of a relation to them. Propositions, in our sense, are tools we use to characterize and keep track of the truth-conditions of the episode. Lewis’s account, like the Kaplan–Perry account, does not have episodes, utterances or beliefs, as elements. So, on Lewis’s view, Heimson’s belief, whether he thinks he is Hume or thinks he is Dylan, cannot be true in the strong sense that there is no possible way it could be true. On his view, the belief consists of Heimson, the relevant time, and the attitude of self-ascription to the property of being Hume/being Bob Dylan. Since there is no possibility that Heimson at the time has that property, there is no way the belief can be true. Heimson is irrational in all possible circumstances.

4.7 Conclusion In this chapter, we have offered a brief and undoubtedly partial account of the ways an account of language as a human activity intruded in the philosophy of language during the past century, focusing, in particular, on the discussion of singular reference. As a way of confronting the need to embrace this intrusion, we presented and defended the reflexive-referential account, and we discussed

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

4 Philosophy of Language and Action Theory

an example of the beneficial impact of action theory on the philosophy of language. The conception of language as action inaugurated by Austin, Grice, Strawson, and others not only brought new pragmatic theories of language and novel theoretical tools, such as the distinction between locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary aspects of utterances or the systematic study of nonliteral speech via the notion of implicature, but inspired new philosophical theories, like the reflexive-referential theory or critical pragmatics, to deal with classic puzzles in the philosophy of language like reference and cognitive significance.

References Anscombe, G. E. M. [1957] (2000). Intention. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Barcan Marcus, R. (1961). Modalities and intensional languages. Synthese, 13(4), 303–322. Barwise, J., and Perry, J. (1983). Situations and Attitudes. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Bratman, M. (1987). Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Corazza, E., and Korta, K. (2015). Frege on subject matter and identity statements. Analysis, 75(4), 562–565. Davidson, D. [1980] (2001). Essays on Actions and Events. Oxford: Clarendon Press. de Ponte, M., Korta, K., and Perry, J. (2020). Utterance and context. In T. Ciecierski and P. Grabarczyk (eds.) The Architecture of Context and Context-Sensitivity (pp. 15–29). Cham: Springer. de Ponte, M., Korta, K., and Perry, J. (2021). Four puzzling paragraphs: Frege on “≡” and “=.” Semiotica, 240, 75–95. de Saussure, F. [1916] (2011). Course in General Linguistics. New York: Columbia University Press. Donnellan, K. S. (1966). Reference and definite descriptions. The Philosophical Review, 75(3), 281–304. Donnellan, K. S. (1970). Proper names and identifying descriptions. Synthese, 21, 335–358. Føllesdal, D. [1966] (2004). Referential Opacity and Modal Logic. New York and London: Routledge. Frege, G. [1879] (1967). Begriffsschrift, Eine der Arithmetischen Nachgebildete Formelsprache des Reinen Denkens. Trans. S. Bauer-Mengelberg, Begriffsschrift, a Formula Language, Modeled upon that of Arithmetic, for Pure Thought. Halle a. S.: Louis Nebert. Repr. in Van Heijenoort (1967), pp. 1–82. Frege, G. [1892] (1948). Sense and reference. Trans. Max Black of Frege (1892) Über Sinn und Bedeutung. The Philosophical Review, 57(3), 209–230. Frege, G. [1918] (1967). Der gedanke: Eine logische untersuchung. Trans. A. Quinton and M. Quinton, The thought: A logical inquiry. Beitra¨ge zur Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus, I (1918–1919), 58–77. Repr. in Strawson (1967), pp. 17–38.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

113

114

MARÍA DE PONTE, KEPA KORTA, AND JOHN PERRY

Geach, P. T. (1950). Russell’s theory of descriptions. Analysis, 10(4), 84–88. Goldman, A. I. (1970). A Theory of Human Action. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Grice, H. P. (1971). Intention and uncertainty. Proceedings of the British Academy, 57, 263–279. Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole and J. L. Morgan (eds.), Syntax and Semantics. Vol. III: Speech Acts (pp. 41–58). New York: Academic Press. Repr. in Grice (1989), pp. 22–40. Grice, H. P. (1989). Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kaplan, D. (1989). Demonstratives. In J. Almog, J. Perry, and H. Wettstein (eds.) Themes from Kaplan (pp. 481–563). Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. Korta, K., and Perry, J. (2011). Critical Pragmatics: An Inquiry into Reference and Communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Korta, K., and Perry, J. (2013). Highlights of critical pragmatics: Reference and the contents of the utterance. Intercultural Pragmatics, 10(1), 161–182. Korta, K., and Perry, J. (2020). Pragmatics. In E. N. Zalta (ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, Spring edition. Kripke, S. A. (1980). Naming and Necessity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lewis, D. (1979). Attitudes de dicto and de se. The Philosophical Review, 88(4), 513–543. Martí, G. (1995). The essence of genuine reference. Journal of Philosophical Logic, 24 (3), 275–289. Morris, C. (1946). Signs, Language and Behavior. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: PrenticeHall. Morris, C. W. (1938). Foundations of the theory of signs. In O. Neurath, R. Carnap, and C. Morris (eds.), International Encyclopedia of Unified Science (Vol. I, pp. 1–59). Chicago: Chicago University Press. Peirce, C. S. (1931–1958). Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Perry, J. (1977). Frege on demonstratives. The Philosophical Review, 86(4), 474–497. Perry, J. (1988). Cognitive significance and new theories of reference. Noûs, 22(1), 1–18. Repr. in Perry (2000), pp. 189–206. Perry, J. (2000). The Problem of the Essential Indexical and other Essays. Stanford: CSLI. Perry, J. [2001] (2012). Reference and Reflexivity, 2nd ed. Stanford: CSLI Publications. Russell, B. (1948). Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits. New York: Simon and Schuster. Russell, B. (1957). Mr. Strawson on referring. Mind, 66(263), 385–389. Searle, J. R. (1985). Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stalnaker, R. (1970). Pragmatics. Synthese, 22, 272–289. Repr. in Stalnaker (1999), pp. 31–47. Stalnaker, R. (1999). Context and Content. London: Routledge. Strawson, P. F. (1950). On referring. Mind, 59(235), 320–344.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

4 Philosophy of Language and Action Theory

Strawson, P. F. (1967). Philosophical Logic. London: Oxford University Press. Van Heijenoort, J. (1967). From Frege to Gödel: A Source Book in Mathematical Logic, 1879–1931. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wettstein, H. (1986). Has semantics rested on a mistake? The Journal of Philosophy, 83 (4), 185–209.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press

115

5 A Functional Approach to Context Rebekah Wegener and Lise Fontaine

5.1 Introduction The aim of this chapter is to highlight and explain the principal ways in which context is situated within the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and to explore the main themes and parameters which situate context within an integrated theory of language as a semiotic resource. SFL has viewed context as integral to linguistic theory, rather than an optional extra or a complementary add on. In Butler’s review of three structural-functional theories, he states (2004: 164) that SFL is “the only functional theory to have built in a specific model of social context, through the parameters of field, tenor and mode.” However, not only has context been a core concept in the development of the theory, it also has explanatory power through the SFL concepts of realization, instantiation, and stratification. Within the SFL framework, “context is regarded as explaining the form of the language system as a whole. The clusterings of choices in the language system are hypothesised to derive from clusterings of contextual features” (Berry 2017: 43). As we will show below, the relationship of realization more accurately captures the relationship between context and language, since one is not, strictly speaking, derived from the other in any directional sense. For Halliday, “every act of meaning has a context of situation, an environment within which it is performed and interpreted” (1979/2002: 201, emphasis in original). Not only is language use shaped by context but also context is shaped by language. Within SFL, context refers to all aspects of a social (communicative) process that have an impact on meaning and shape the outcome of that social process, including the material situational setting, the topic, the modality, and the relationships between the social actors. This view of context is situational and is defined primarily in terms of three parameters (sometimes referred to as variables): the Field of discourse, the Tenor of discourse and the Mode of We are very grateful to Anne McCabe and to our anonymous reviewer for comments on earlier drafts.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press

5 A Functional Approach to Context

discourse. Each is described within SFL as follows. Field represents the social context, seen as “the nature of the social process in which the text is embedded – ‘what is going on’” (Halliday 1981/2002: 227); Tenor includes social relationships and roles, where a text is viewed as “the interpersonal relationships among the participants – ‘who are taking part’” (p. 227); and Mode concerns the symbolic organization of language, including “the role assigned to the text, including both medium and rhetorical function – ‘what part the language is playing’” (p. 227). How these parameters relate to semantics and the lexicogrammar within Halliday’s framework will be discussed below. It is important to note at this point that the field of SFL scholarship is broad and while context will be represented in this chapter following Halliday, his is not the only framework within SFL. For example, Fawcett (1980) developed a different place for context in his model. While the concepts are all very similar in many ways, they do not take up the same place in the framework. For Fawcett, context is a type of knowledge (or information) held by the speaker, and in this sense there are different contexts. For example, Fawcett’s model has a built-in distinction between “context of situation” (recoverable from the observable), “context of co-text” (recoverable from preceding text), and “context of culture” (recoverable from long-term memory). This representation brings Fawcett’s model much closer to the models of context put forward by Philipp Wegener or even Breal (see Nerlich 1990 or Nerlich and Clarke 1996). Fawcett’s approach to context is perhaps more cognitive and individualistic than Halliday’s more semantic and social one. It is, however, true that the concept of context in Fawcett’s model has not been developed as explicitly as that of Halliday’s. See Fawcett (2015) for an overview of his account of context. While it may be the case that the SFL framework brought context into its theory of language from a very early stage, it was not independent of strong influences both from other linguistic theories and from other disciplines such as anthropology and sociology. This chapter will begin in Section 5.2 with an overview of the historical development of context as a concept within SFL theory. Following this, Section 5.3 examines its place in the SFL theory of linguistics, including how the model accounts for its interaction with language. In Section 5.4 we consider some of the challenges with respect to studies of context: (i) how we can reconcile the place of context within a theory of linguistics and (ii) whether the theory predicts different contexts for different modalities when working with multimodality. Finally, we conclude the chapter with a brief summary and what we feel are key directions for future research in this area.

5.2 Historical Development of Context within SFL As a functional approach to language, SFL has its theoretical roots very firmly in the European Functionalist tradition (Halliday 1978), which many argue differs significantly from the American Functionalist tradition including in key

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press

117

118

REBEKAH WEGENER AND LISE FONTAINE

assumptions about the nature of language and linguistic evidence (for more on this debate, see Dirven and Fried 1987 or Newmeyer 2001). While the European tradition is typically traced back to the Prague School,1 clearly the crucial assumptions of European functionalism go back much further and did not arise out of nowhere with the Prague School (Daneš 1987). What is important for understanding a functional approach to context is the assumptions that these approaches make about language, the nature of linguistic data, and the fundamental role of linguistics as a discipline, since this shapes how theories and models are built and how they are applied in research. Halliday’s functionalism takes its systematicity from Saussure and Hjelmslev, but with a distinct cybernetics flavor that results in system networks as a means of representation that model both open and closed systems. Halliday (1995) is quite clear in relating this to the debate about language evolution: Since language is a fourth order system, at once physical and biological and social, as well as having its own special character as semiotic, the total context must be in terms of theories about systems of all these types. It will be clear that the ideological antecedents of my discourse lie not in the formal grammars and truth-conditional semantics of the latter part of the century, but in a more functionally-oriented linguistics: that of Sapir and Whorf, Malinowski and Firth, Bühler, Mathesius and Trubetzkoy, Hjelmslev, Benveniste and Martinet, among many others.

Functional perspectives on language generally assume that language is a tool used as an instrument to facilitate communication or social interaction. The primary concern is thus on language in use and on better understanding language process and structure, which presupposes modeling both the speaker and the listener.2 In this view, how language is actually used in communicative contexts becomes crucial. Modeling context, therefore, must be integral to functional approaches to language and all functional models of language must account for context to some extent. However, as Butler and Gonzálvez-García (2014) argue very few functional models have a detailed model of context, with SFL being a notable exception in this regard. Perhaps the most significant influence on SFL in terms of context has been Malinowski, who has typically been considered to belong to the macrosociological or anthropology tradition. However, Malinowski’s account should not be underestimated. In his preface to Malinowski’s book, Frazer (1922: ix) explains that his method “takes full account of the complexity of human nature. He sees [human nature], so to say in the round, and not in the flat.” While many at that time considered that “pure sociology should confine itself 1

2

According to François (2018: 7), its beginnings can be traced to 1929 with the Prague group and Frei’s La grammaire des fautes: Introduction à la linguistique fonctionnelle, assimilation et différenciation, brièveté et invariabilité, expressivité (our translation: “The grammar of errors: Introduction to functional linguistics, assimilation and differentiation, brevity, invariability and expressivity.” See Polguère (2015) for an argument in favor of modeling primarily the speaker in a meaning-driven functional model of language (Meaning-Text Theory, MTT).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press

5 A Functional Approach to Context

to the description of acts” (Frazer 1922: ix), it is clear that Malinowski saw the purpose of sociology as being centrally concerned with meaning. In viewing the object of study “in the round,” we see that Malinowski draws from both the micro and the macro in his establishment of the scope of modern anthropology. The SFL approach has tended to relate context very closely to the grammar and, as will be discussed below, the concept of metafunction (Butt and Wegener 2008), but also through a kind of distributed semantics that allows for a fuzzy boundary between grammar and semantics. Coming to functionalism through his mentor Firth and proto-pragmatists like Wegener, Whittney, and Breal (Nerlich and Clarke 1996: 248) and directly influenced by Malinowski’s modeling of situated interaction, Halliday’s “context of situation” has always had a distinct place alongside other kinds of linguistic statements. As Halliday (1991/2007) argues, when we arrive at the level of a given context of situation, we are already in the culture – hence, there is no need to proceed to culture. Rather, we have the task of elucidating what we find there in the typical-actual, as Firth referred to it. Halliday’s own practice in this regard appears to be cautious: While he arranges his investigations with respect to field, tenor, and mode, the variables seen as relevant for any given account of context/text stay in close proximity to the register under description. Firth’s work with Malinowski in London, and Firth’s own fieldwork from Kenya to Afghanistan (Rebori, 2002), confirmed the significance of context and incorporated the notion into a polysystemic, relational theory of choices at many levels. Halliday (1973) integrated “context of situation” into a linguistic theory that included a separate semantic stratum and a more abstract notion of function – “metafunction.” Context of situation became the interface between language and the socio-material order (or, more correctly, between language and the dimensions of the socio-material order that are of importance to the processes of meaning in a given instance). Firth’s ideas on context were extended by Ellis (1966), who provided some clarifications, and Mitchell (1957) who applied it to an actual community. Ure (1969) brought a typological order to the linguist’s work with semantic varieties, or registers. Work by Hasan (1978, 1984, 1999), in particular, has elaborated and extended the Hallidayan approach by conceptualizing the stratum with explicit motivations for the contrasts within the three major systems of field/tenor/mode, and by developing the systematization of the semantic stratum (crucial to activating the descriptive power of context, through realization and hence, inevitably, in terms of delimitation in specific descriptions). Halliday’s work represents an important extension to Malinowski’s legacy. Everything in a cultural context may be functional and therefore – in that sense – meaning bearing. Halliday is also, however, demonstrating, through the polysystemic mapping of semantic choice, that function (albeit of an abstract kind) provides the optimum way to understand the internal relations

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press

119

120

REBEKAH WEGENER AND LISE FONTAINE

of a language system, not just the externalized tasks to which it is employed. A realizational model is a mapping of patterns of patterns, all of which occur together on different levels of abstraction – from social configuration to modalities of manifestation (e.g., in sound or writing). This evolved “happening together” is a key to the power of languages for extending their potential as systems (or for their speakers to so extend them). Languages are not encodings, but encodings of encodings of encodings (see Wegener 2011 and Butt and Wegener 2008). While the story of context within SFL developed from the historical roots as just described, it has not remained static. Other theorists, in particular Martin (1985, 1993, 1997), have extended the stratification above context to genre, and on to ideology, in order to treat variation through Gleason’s (1965) notion of “agnation” (albeit here, an issue of context and of the levels “above” context, not of grammatical variants). There have been numerous other significant contributors to the discussion of context in the SFL paradigm, for example Gregory and Carroll (1978) and Ventola (1983), who emphasized the flowing and dynamic nature of context, a notion that we see in Berry’s early work but also recently (2016a), O’Donnell (1999, 2021), Bartlett (2016) and Moore (2020). Others have picked up Hasan’s early representations of context as system networks and developed system networks for field, tenor, and mode (Butt 1999/2004; Bowcher 1999; Hasan 1999). Berry (2016b) and Wegener (2011, 2016) have worked on context for situated interaction and in particular have focused on new divisions for context. In the next section, we turn our attention to the relationship between context and language, focusing on the way in which context is situated within the SFL theory of linguistics.

5.3 Context and Language We might want to ask, as does Hasan (2014: 47), whether “the study of context deserves the attention and care being demanded here3” since, as she explains, “[i]n modern linguistics until quite recently context had been viewed as an optional extra.” For SFL, the answer is clearly “yes,” since it is one of the few functional theories to have both centralized the concept of context and made of it “an analytical level of description” (Bowcher 2018: 2). The concept of context is theoretically motivated within the SFL framework. Context, as Halliday (2013: 34) argues, is considered to belong “within the domain of a linguistic theory.” Although central to the theoretical framework, context is extralinguistic for Halliday. Critically, for SFL, context is semiotic and its relation(s) to language is explicit, as will be shown below.

3

Of course Hasan’s use of “here” (there in the context of her writing) is deictically different from our use of “here,” but we feel it is relevant given this volume dedicated to context.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press

5 A Functional Approach to Context

However, we must be clear that context itself, as a semiotic construct, is not “out there,” as in outside the speaker, in any material sense as we might imagine would be the case of the physical surroundings for a speech act. A discussion of semiotic context, as concerns our purposes here as compared to material context, is beyond the scope of what we will consider (but see Bowcher 2018 for a detailed discussion of these two types of context within the SFL framework). While it might be considered outside the language system, context is not independent of language use; it is connected to the language system. Halliday (1991/2007: 281) explains the interaction as follows: How do you set about “creating” a context for language? You cannot do it by means of legislation, like decreeing that poems are to be written in praise of a national leader. The only way is for the text itself to create its own context of situation.

This sense of context being created from text makes clear the inherent relationship between context and language use; language construes context. This perspective on context is summarized very nicely by Berry (2017: 43): SFL is a theory of language as choice; the view is that it is impossible to make sense of linguistic choices without reference to context and also that it is impossible to make sense of context without reference to linguistic choices. Linguistic choices are strongly influenced by the contexts of the situation in which they occur, but in certain circumstances linguistic choices may bring about a change in the context, for instance leading it to become more formal or more informal.

In this sense, we might gloss the relationship between context and language as dialectical in the SFL framework. The definition and place of context within the theory is interpreted somewhat differently by different scholars (see, e.g., Martin 1992; Wegener 2011; Matthiessen 2015; Bartlett 2017; Tam 2017; and various chapters in Fontaine et al. 2013). However, there is general agreement concerning the significance of four theoretical concepts which contribute to defining, describing, and parametrizing context. These concepts, which we will now explore, are stratification, realization, instantiation, and construal. Within SFL, stratification is a key pillar within the theory, one of five main dimensions (Wegener 2011). A stratified language system is one which “consists of different coding levels” (Taverniers 2011: 1102), where the relationship between the strata is accounted for by realization (see below). It is through the stratified system that language becomes a semiotic system, i.e., one which creates meaning. Stratification is sometimes discussed in terms of abstraction, i.e., higher levels are more abstract than lower ones; for example, context is more abstract than lexicogrammar, although this notion of abstraction is not entirely problem free (for a useful discussion of the concept of abstraction within the theory, see Williams et al. 2017). The strata are labeled (from more abstract to more concrete) as follows: Context , Semantics , Lexicogrammar , Expression. This organization is

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press

121

122

REBEKAH WEGENER AND LISE FONTAINE

Extralinguistic Interface context (eco-social environment)

semantics lexicogrammar

Form of the content

Content plane Figure 5.1 A Functional approach to context within a theory of linguistics (adapted from Halliday 2013)

typically represented in SFL literature by a series of embedded circles, each representing a particular stratum.4 Context is always illustrated as the highest level in order to represent “how the stratified linguistic system is ‘embedded’ in context” (Halliday and Matthiessen 2014: 25). We illustrate the stratification of the content plane in Figure 5.1, which is adapted from Halliday (2013). In the SFL model, semantics is the stratum which serves as an interface between context and lexicogrammar. Halliday (2013: 34) explains this stratification as follows: “Somewhere between the lexicogrammar and the context – the significant eco-social environment – we recognise an interface stratum, that of semantics, Hjelmslev’s ‘content substance.’” Figure 5.1 represents only a partial view, we have excluded the expression plane (e.g., phonology or graphology) as it does not directly concern our current discussion; however, see Taverniers (2011) for more detail about the full representation. As a stratified layer in the theory of linguistics within SFL, Figure 5.1 can be explained as follows: Context is realized as semantics, semantics is realized as lexicogrammar.5 Equally though, as noted above, text construes context. The relationship between the strata is therefore bidirectional, rather than deterministic. The concepts of realization and construal are discussed in more detail below, as is the dynamic nature of context, but for now we continue with the consequences of stratified context within a theory of linguistics. As mentioned above, each stratum constitutes a different coding level. Context is organized by the parameters of Field, Tenor, and Mode of discourse, commonly referred to as the variables of register (see Lukin et al. 2011 and Bowcher 2017). Semantics is organized metafunctionally, i.e., the broad set of functions that language serves. Taverniers (2019) offers an in-depth discussion of semantics as an interface stratum, providing considerable insight into how it contributes to language as a meaning-making system. In brief, there are three 4

5

While the view represented here can be considered standard in the sense of most commonly used, there are some considerable differences as concerns the strata of context and the place of genre, indeed whether or not genre as a concept is needed. For a very useful overview of this issue, see Matthiessen et al. (2019). Although not shown here, we could continue and add that lexicogrammar is realized as phonology (see Taverniers 2011 and/or Lukin 2017).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press

5 A Functional Approach to Context

main metafunctions: Experiential, Interpersonal and Textual. The metafunctional organization of language at the semantic stratum as expressed in the clause is well discussed throughout the SFL literature, perhaps most effectively and most recently by Berry (2019). Lexicogrammar represents a “construct of wording” (Halliday 1981/2002: 221); in other words, the form of the content in wordings where lexis and grammar are continuous, inseparable. The organizing principle here is that of rank, with the unit of the clause as the central or core unit. While the concept of rank is largely unproblematic in its broadest sense, i.e. that smaller units make up larger ones and vice versa, the concept of the rank scale as used in SFL is open for some debate (see Fontaine and Schönthal 2019; Berry 2017; and Fawcett 2000). For our purposes here, it suffices to view rank as an organizing principle of the lexicogrammar stratum where the clause, the main grammatical unit, is said to consist of phrase units, phrase units consist of word units, and word units consist of morpheme units. As mentioned above, the relationship between context and language, as different strata, is that of realization. For Halliday (1992: 352) realization is an “interstratal relationship, meanings are realized as wordings, wordings realized as sound (or soundings).” Realization is the principle that accounts for how “patterns on one level both construe and construct patterns on another level” (Cassens and Wegener 2008: 208). While realization may, at first glance, seem somewhat similar to the relations described above for the rank scale, it is not, as Wegener et al. (2008) explain, a “consists of” type of relation. Attempts have been made within the SFL literature to account for the relation between context and metafunction by means of a so-called context-metafunction hookup hypothesis, or CMHH (see Hasan 1995). However, as Berry (2017: 47) points out, despite a lack of evaluation, this hook-up hypothesis is generally accepted as fact. The main problem according to Berry (p. 47) is as follows: “if contextual features are established via semantic features and semantic features are established via contextual features, the reasoning is circular and the hypothesis becomes untestable.” While there is no space to consider these issues here, Berry (2017) lists several works for the interested reader, including Thompson (1999), Clarke (2013), and Berry (2016b). In Figure 5.2, which situates context and language in the SFL framework, we can see that realization is the principle accounting for the relationship between context and language along the stratification dimension. This means that context is “realised in / construed by” the stratum below (Halliday 1991/ 2007: 275), which, in the stratified model given in Figure 5.1, is semantics. The same can then be said for semantics, i.e., that semantics is realized in/construed by lexicogrammar, and so on. Therefore, an inherent aspect of realization is the SFL concept of construal. Construal,6 as a theoretical term in SFL, is what gives meaning to the instances of language. For example, an imperative clause such as eat your 6

Construal as used in SFL is conceptually and operationally different from the use of this term in other functional frameworks. See, for example, Langacker (2019).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press

123

124

REBEKAH WEGENER AND LISE FONTAINE

instantiation

SYSTEM

realization

CONTEXT

context of culture (cultural domain)

LANGUAGE language as system

(register)

INSTANCE

context of (situation situation type)

(text type)

language as text

Figure 5.2 Language and context, system and instance (adapted from Halliday 1991/2007: 275)

vegetables is said to construe a command. This command, in turn, would be said to construe a feature of the context parameter of Tenor, for example construing an unequal power relationship (e.g., social hierarchy). Lukin et al. 2011 provide a detailed discussion of construal as it relates to realization between the strata of context and semantics. Construal is, then, the process of meaning-making; we might think of it as a kind of inference, or interpretation. According to Taverniers (2011: 1122), construal refers to “the relationship between language and extralinguistic reality” and is therefore an essential component of inter-stratal realization. Hasan (2010: 12) explains this relationship as follows: “In the reception of the utterance, realisation is construal of the relevant choice at the higher level: thus, in decoding an utterance, the choice in wording construes meaning, the choice in meaning construes context.” Here we can see that realization and construal are nearly equated in terms of, in the one sense, relating the wording to the semantics, but we also find simultaneously that the wording construes meaning, i.e., it is meaning-making. For further discussion of construal and how it relates to other concepts touched upon briefly here, see Berry (2017). Having considered realization and construal in relation to the stratification of context, we also note in Figure 5.2 a relation between context as culture and context as situation, which are differentiated by the principle of instantiation. In contrast to the inter-stratal relationship of realization, instantiation is an intra-stratal relationship of the move between the system and the instance (Halliday 1994/2002: 352). Taverniers (2011: 1120) explains that this principle “concerns the relationship between a schema and an instance (a particular usage/an instantiation) of this schema.” Berry (2017: 53) describes instantiation as “a relationship between the theory and the data.” In this view, context of culture as a theoretical instantiation holds a significant place in the SFL model of context in that, as Matthiessen (2015: 34) explains, the two perspectives on context are differentiated by instantiation: “context of culture is located at the potential pole, context of situation at the instance pole.” For Halliday (1991/2007: 282) “the culture is construed by systems of language choice; the situation is construed by patterns of language use.”

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press

5 A Functional Approach to Context

However, he warns that in talking about these two aspects of context, we must not slip into thinking that these are two different things. The representation in Figure 5.2 of the relationship between system and instance is meant to show one and the same object of study from two different perspectives. The system perspective offers one of meaning potential, in other words “the potential that lies behind all the instances” (Halliday 2002: 10). Space does not permit a detailed exploration of culture here but see Lukin (2017) for a more detailed discussion of context of culture together with its relation to ideology. For our purposes here, we can think of instantiation as a type of abstraction, where instance (here context of situation) is more concrete, and potential (here context of culture) is more abstract. As Williams et al. (2017: 14) explain, “The notion of potentials is fundamental in systemic theorising, because it allows the linguistic model to apply not just to previously encountered linguistic utterances, but also to additionally try to explain how speakers produce and interpret novel instances of language.” The view we now have of context in the SFL framework is that context is realized in language, and also construed by it. As O’Donnell (2020: 73) explains, “Context of situation is thus defined in relation to language, rather than being defined only in relation to the social system itself.” As a stratified layer in the framework, the relationship between context and language is mediated by semantics. Halliday’s (1991/2007: 282) claim that “text and situation come into being together” can be interpreted as text and context co-constructing. Context is not deterministic, nor is it static or stable. This perspective on context is captured very well by O’Donnell (2021) as follows: I argue that at each point of a text/interaction, we as interactants have the choice to affirm the contextual expectation, or to vary from it, either using novel means to achieve some situational goal, or by shifting to a distinct Context of Situation (as when the speaker in a conference talk makes smalltalk with someone in the audience). Rather than focusing on the context-forms -text-with-dynamic-exceptions approach, I argue we should be taking the approach such that every act creates its own context, which sometimes is coherent to the context created by prior acts of the interactants.

We have focused on the strong connection that the SFL notion of context makes with language. The theory views the language system as stratified. In this sense, we find interacting layers or strata which account for how meanings are construed in contexts of language use. Context, while viewed as extralinguistic, is nevertheless implicated in the theoretical linguistic framework by the realization principle which provides the account of how context relates to lexicogrammar and at this interface is where we find the stratum of semantics. In the next section, we examine this framework for context in more detail by considering two aspects which pose theoretical challenges. In doing so, we also provide a sketch of important directions for future research and development.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press

125

126

REBEKAH WEGENER AND LISE FONTAINE

5.4 Two Challenges in Working with Context While in this section we give our attention specifically to the perspective of SFL, the two areas we discuss are in some ways common to all functional approaches and applications, at least to some extent. Of particular interest for us is (i) where context sits in relation to language and (ii) what the relationship is between context and different modes of meaning-making behavior.

5.4.1 Where in the Model is Context? As we have just discussed, language is modeled in SFL as a stratificational model, where the different strata are related through the principle of realization, rather than a causal relationship, since for Halliday (1994/2002b: 358) realization is best treated as a dialectic relation. A text is created by its context, the semiotic environment of people and their activities that we have construed via the concepts of field, tenor and mode; it also creates that context. The relationship that we refer to as realisation between levels of semiosis – situation (doing) realized in semantics (meaning), semantics realized in lexicogrammar (wording), and so on – is a dialectic one involving what Lemke (1984) interprets as n-order metaredundancies. A semiotic event is an event on many levels. (Halliday 1994/2002a: 254)

Realization is theoretically abstract in nature, i.e., the strata in the model do not exist in any concrete sense, and realization is typically seen as the dialectal relationship between these strata, i.e., an inter-stratal relationship. But there is also an intra-stratal use of the term to “refer to any move which constitutes a link in the realisational chain, even one that does not by itself cross a stratal boundary (for example, features realized as structures)” (Halliday 1994/2002b: 352). Hence realization is a shorthand for the entire chain or sequence of relations involved in realization (both inter- and intra-stratal), which is crucial for a stratified representation of language. SFL’s stratified model incorporates both the levels of the expression plane (briefly mentioned above) and the content plane, which includes lexicogrammar (wording and structure), semantics (the meaning system), and context (culture and situation – elements of the social structure as they pertain to meaning). Context is not language, so it is not treated as part of the stratal arrangement of language; however, it does stand in a realizational relationship to semantics, which is part of the stratal arrangement of language. For SFL, it is part of the development of the adult language system that both the content and the expression plane become stratified (Halliday and Matthiessen 2004). Thus, as adults we have access to a meaning potential which is able to “expand, more or less indefinitely” (Halliday and Matthiessen 2004: 24), allowing us to variously construe our experience and our social relations. In this way, uniqueness is built in, although it is a very socially oriented

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press

5 A Functional Approach to Context

uniqueness (hence original rather than individual), since to be shared it must be coded (Hasan 1999). What this means is that in order to share our internal world with others we must encode it in a form that others can recognize and understand, at least to some extent. Halliday and Matthiessen (2004) suggest that it is not only the content plane which is stratified, but the expression plane as well. Thus, where content is split into semantics and lexicogrammar, the expression plane divides into phonology and phonetics, “separating the organizing function from the function of interfacing with the environment” (p. 25). One consequence of this thinking is that if we recognize that stratification takes place for both the content and the expression planes, we might consider whether further stratification is possible at the context plane. Do we find an organizing function which is separate from the function of interfacing with the socio-material environment? If there is stratification of the contextual plane, then we would have a stratum with an interfacing function which makes contact with the socio-material world (the socio-material setting), much as is the case with the semantics stratum, and another one with an organizing function, i.e., organizes context. In many respects this is how context of culture and context of situation are often used, although the relationship between culture and situation is one of instantiation, as we see in Figures 5.1 and 5.2. For those who model context as systems, the relation of instantiation (as set out in Figures 5.1 and 5.2) becomes more problematic as Hasan (2004: 175) argues: If context of situation is to context of culture as text is to the system of language, then, by analogy, so far as context theory in SFL is concerned it is like having the theory of text, but without an ability to show its relation to the theory of language system.

For Hasan, then, by explicitly relating context to lexicogrammar, Halliday had made the realizational chain very complete at one end, but with a lot of missing links at the other end. While Hasan is clearly correct in this observation, it could be argued that this is in keeping with the deliberately fuzzy notion that Halliday has of context and language. Halliday views context as everything that is necessary to fully elucidate meaning, but also as the causal explanation of variation in language behavior. Therefore language is embedded in context, and context is an integral part of language, which largely follows from Firth, who, according to Halliday (2003: 243): consistently maintained that all study of language was a study of meaning; and meaning was function in a context, where the “context” was located both in the various strata of language itself and in its situational and cultural environment – all of which came within the compass of linguistic theory.

For purely practical purposes, this fuzzy representation can be difficult to actually work with, because it forces us to ask: How do you model context as both distributed among different strata and contained within a specific stratum? If we consider Figure 5.2 again, we can see that Halliday is positing

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press

127

128

REBEKAH WEGENER AND LISE FONTAINE

a realization relation between the abstract system of language and the abstract system of culture, and the instantial relation to situated language. He proposes that if there is a dialectal relation between language and culture, then we can expect that there will be realization statements. But there is no reason to expect that these realization statements will be of the same form or nature as realization statements between other strata, since the system is not symmetrical. As long as you concentrate your attention on the core of the linguistic system, on linguistic form (grammar and vocabulary), then the interrelationships that you are studying are – or can be treated as if they were – wholly bounded within language, since their immediate points of reference are also within language: on the one hand the semantic system, and on the other hand the phonological system. But once you become concerned with the linguistic system as a whole, including the semantic system, then you have to look outside language for your criteria of idealization. (Halliday 1974: 82)

What we can glean from Halliday’s claim here is that to fully understand meaning, we have to go outside of language, but going outside language is not the job of the linguist. The implications of this claim are twofold: Firstly, it seems likely that the linguist alone will not be able to fully “solve” meaning. Secondly, by extension, meaning is best modeled as a transdisciplinary problem that needs to be viewed from multiple perspectives. To address the questions about meaning that he was interested in, Halliday employed Bernstein’s (1971) theorization for the following two reasons: 1. Bernstein’s work is “a theory of the social system with language embedded in it” (Halliday 1974: 83), and 2. It examines the function of language in the social system. Halliday’s idealization is motivated by a view of language embedded in and motivated by the social system: “the semantic system, which is the meaning potential embodied in language, is itself the realisation of a higher level semiotic which we may define as a behavioural system or more generally as a social semiotic” (Halliday 1974: 86). The exact nature and representation of this higher semiotic and its relation to language remains rather elusive and underspecified although it is a key area of ongoing research (see, e.g., Bateman 2019, or Maiorani 2017). This then raises the question of what counts as language if our meaning potential is distributed across different modes of meaning-making behavior or multimodality, which is the second challenge for studies of context.

5.4.2 Multimodality and Context As with all functional approaches, SFL sees language as a tool and language use as a form of behavior. In line with his view of the importance of looking at everything from the perspective of how it makes meaning, Halliday (2003)

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press

5 A Functional Approach to Context

follows Ellis (1966) in arguing that language “has to create a universe of its own, a parallel reality that is as it were made of meaning.” If we take this perspective seriously, we are in the position of viewing all behavior as potentially meaning bearing, and indeed, all artifacts and even the environment itself (Fawcett 1990). These different modes of meaning-making are all used by humans in their interaction and to the extent that they are useful for us, we can organize them in various ways and to different extents as distinct codes.7 The broad-scale use of different modes by humans does not mean that the different modes have the same meaning potential, since, as Hasan suggests, “despite overlaps, what can be said through the verbal code is not coextensive with what can be said through the gazing code or the gesture code or the code of dress” (Hasan 1980: 107). Each mode carries distinct representational capacities which relate to the means of interaction and are codified in different ways and to different extents. Not having equal access to the full range of meanings in a given mode is distinct from the mode itself having a limited potential. Individuals may not have the same access to the mode, but the mode has the same potential whether we access it or not. Here the situation is that the modes themselves do not have the same meaning potential. The implication of this limit on the meaning-making potential for different modalities is that they will have a different semantic stratum and different contexts, although they share the same material-situational and temporal setting and are part of the same “text.” They will also have different reactances in the contextual stratum and may not even have a distinct organizing stratum. That is to say that what counts as context for one mode may be quite different to what counts as context for a different mode and even in the one shared situation, different aspects of the context will have different effects on different modalities. Indeed, there is no reason to suspect that each mode should conform to the same dimensional arrangement at all, and we cannot expect that there is the same metafunctional arrangement. So with multimodal texts (and this includes all forms of meaning-making behavior) we are in the situation of having very fuzzy boundaries between text and context. In order to make sense of and manipulate our socio-material world, we typically make use of all of the modalities we have at our disposal. Some of these modalities we organize, and they become codified to a greater or lesser extent, but this is not static. Technological changes alter the potential of modalities and change what we can do with them. They change in their permanence, their shareability, their editability and adaptability, and in turn, this changes how we can use them and what we can use them for, and a contextual theory of language has to be able to manage these changes. Access to multiple modalities gives us certain advantages for meaningmaking in that we can use it for redundancy, or expansion. For example, we 7

While some use the terms code and mode interchangeably, we prefer to keep them distinct, especially as concerns multimodality.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press

129

130

REBEKAH WEGENER AND LISE FONTAINE

can use different available modalities to encode the same meaning (redundancy), or we can use these different modalities to create quite distinct meanings (expansion). Here we might think of an exit sign that uses color, light, words, and images to mean the same thing (redundancy) or a parent engaging multiple children at once through different modalities (expansion). We can make use of redundancy for emphasis or as a reminder, and we can make use of expansion as a way to split the semiotic load between modalities. This splitting of the semiotic load is incredibly useful particularly in some domains such as surgery or air traffic control, or indeed any situation where participants are engaged in a shared task with common goals (see Wegener 2016). But if we want to consider context, whether that is for the purposes of fully understanding meaning or for mapping variation or similarity and difference, then we need to be able to define what it means to have a multimodal text before we can consider this in context. Most human communication is multimodal, no matter how you define multimodality (see Bateman et al. 2020). The value of being able to access multimodal data more fully is something that contextual and multimodal AI is only just beginning to realize and address (Wegener and Cassens 2019). However, to make use of this, we have to be able to model multimodal meaning-making in context, which means being able to define boundaries, to work out segmentation and modal alignment, and to look at this in context. Despite being theoretically open to modeling language as inherently multimodal, SFL historically has some problems that Hasan (2004: 21) highlights in her claim that: unlike the “cultural activity theory” associated with the Russian, especially (neo-)Vygotskian literature (Engestrom et al. 1999), “context theory” was not intended to apply to all kinds of social action, being designed specifically with discourse in mind.

Although this distinction varies across the body of her work, Hasan does typically focus her attention on those aspects of social action which relate specifically to discourse or are “construed by discourse.” By discourse, Hasan usually means spoken or written language, with the multimodal aspects of these interactions being covered by context in the form of either material situational setting, situation, or culture. So in Hasan’s model, context of situation includes other modalities as part of the context rather than as part of the discourse. In the wider context of SFL, this means that modalities are potentially present on the expression plane as separate modes of meaning and represented in the contextual plane as part of the context for discourse. Although it would seem to present a theoretical and modeling difficulty, depending on how you go about modeling context, this dual representation does not have to be problematic in application. For example, working with applications is already messy (and/or noisy), and it may appear at first glance

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press

5 A Functional Approach to Context

that it is reasonable for practical application purposes to gloss over the wrinkles in theory. But what does this mean for theory if practitioner after practitioner glosses over those wrinkles for the purposes of their specific project? Working with theory is generally quite abstract and developing a model from theory reduces complexity and abstraction as the model becomes more concrete. In turn, applying the model extends this even further such that theoretical concerns are often hidden and ignored. Given the work that is currently being done (O’Halloran et al. 2019; Stöckl 2019) and the importance of contextual and multimodal AI for human-cenetred technology design and development, work on this area is bound to be an important area of future development for SFL and for studies of context more broadly.

5.5 Concluding Remarks and Future Directions SFL has always had a transdisciplinary and applied focus, something which has shaped and will continue to shape the theory. As we see models of context applied across more varied domains and engaging with different disciplines, we see the theory taking new paths in new directions. For example, applications in domains such as health and medicine (Moore 2019), education and learning (Byrnes 2019; Mickan 2019), and computing and artificial intelligence (Bateman et al. 2019; Wegener and Cassens 2019; Zappavigna 2019) have forged new pathways for the development of context modeling in SFL. It is fair to say that research drawing on the SFL framework has generally focused to a large extent on the social aspect of language and context. More recently we have seen a return to some consideration of the individual. This more cognitive aspect was always available (consider, for example, the work of Philipp Wegener and even Firth and Ellis), but it was much less prominent and underdeveloped to the extent that one might argue it was completely ignored. Recent work from Martin on individuation (Martin 2019) and Wegener on a person-centric approach to context for human-centered AI (Wegener 2016; Cassens and Wegener 2019) has renewed this focus on cognition and the person, in different ways and for different motivations. It may be perceived by some that after what may seem like an extended period of focus on the social aspects of context, the cognitive aspects have still not made an impact on the development of theory. The question of having “an overall cognitive theory of context as a type of mental model” (van Dijk 2005; see also van Dijk 2006) is a worthwhile one. Far from treating mental aspects as alien, SFL provides a venue for examining the features, which combine to produce the structural nature of mental aspects such as purpose. No theory has all the answers to all the questions, but if, as Butler and Gonzálvez-García (2014) suggest, there is fertile ground to explore, it would best be done collaboratively, since each functional theory brings its experience and developments from their own extended periods of focus whether that concerns cognitive processes, typological comparisons, or text in context.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press

131

132

REBEKAH WEGENER AND LISE FONTAINE

If we accept that context cuts across all strata of language, and as such aids the understanding of meaning at all levels, then we can define it simply as everything that is around the text. Context can, and should, be used to understand the linguistic process; the design of research questions, the collection, storage, and analysis of data, and the interpretation and representation of results. In this sense it is both theory and method. As textual analysis, multimodal or otherwise, is carried out, it is context that makes any findings meaningful. Context does not need to be mysterious or idealized, but by the same principle, neither is it helpful to reduce or oversimplify. Perhaps what is most needed in future work is a clear setting out of a process, one that supports the shift from theory to practice, while enabling and supporting collaboration and transdisciplinary work on context. There are two key areas for such a development. Firstly, there is a need for greater transparency around context. While there is a relatively clear process for carrying out grammatical analysis or morphological analysis, and even to a certain extent semantic analysis, analysis at the level of context has no unified or clear procedure. There are no established units, no guidance as to how one might set about analyzing a text in context with the result that we usually end up with a very discursive description of context. Secondly, without a clear procedure it is almost impossible to combine analysis from different projects for comparison or for complementation. At the moment, if one wishes to compare two contexts, it is necessary for the analysis to have been done using the same approach and preferably by the same researcher. Ideally it should be possible to compare across research projects no matter who the researcher and no matter what approach was taken. If our comparison is made on a functional basis, this should be achievable. Just as Halliday and Matthiessen (2004) compare the traditional grammatical terms with the functional ones, allowing comparison of analysis, so it should be possible to compare different contextual analyses if we know the functional motivation of the distinctions. This process is an exercise in ontology matching, which, as Wegener (2011) explains, is useful since there are definite limits to what can be considered context. Different theoretical approaches and different models within theories differ not so much on what they consider context to be, but on how they organize their description. It is possible to see how these different approaches have arranged information in different ways, foregrounding some aspects and hiding others but in many respects covering the same ground. Grimshaw’s (1994) complementary studies of professional discourse show this very clearly. Ultimately, the biggest challenges for the future of context in SFL seem to be modeling and representational challenges. With the exception of some small difficulties, the theory itself provides a useful space for context, and applications of SFL across varied domains make use of this, but it is still a rather case-specific application. Some solutions will undoubtedly be technical, particularly with respect to corpus work, particularly large-scale

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press

5 A Functional Approach to Context

multimodal and multiparticipant corpora. But much of the future work lies with modeling context to make that connection between theory and practice. New tools change theory and practice, just as tools change us as humans and individuals. We would like to end this chapter on context with the following words from Halliday (2003: 3): Meaning needs matter to realize it; at the same time, matter needs meaning to organize it. Human history is a continuing interplay of the material and the semiotic, as modes of action – ways of doing and of being. . . . This is the context in which language needs to be understood.

References Bartlett, T. (2016). Phasal dynamism and the unfolding of meaning as text. English Text Construction, 9(1), 143–164. Bartlett, T. (2017). Context in systemic functional linguistics: Towards scalar supervenience? In T. Bartlett and G. O’Grady (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Systemic Functional Linguistics (pp. 375–390). London/New York: Routledge. Bateman, J. (2019). Transmediality and the end of disembodied semiotics. International Journal of Semiotics and Visual Rhetoric, 3(2), 1–23. Bateman, J., McDonald, D., Hiippala, T., Couto-Vale, D., and Costetchi, E. (2019). Systemic functional linguistics and computation. In G. Thompson, W. L. Bowcher, L. Fontaine, and D. Schonthal (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Systemic Functional Linguistics (pp. 561–586). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bateman, J. A., Wildfeuer, J., and Hiippala, T. (2020). A question of definitions: Foundations for multimodality. A response to Charles Forceville’s review. Visual Communication, 19, 317–320. Bernstein, B. (1971). Class, Codes, and Control, Vol. I: Theoretical Studies Towards a Sociology of Language. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Berry, M. (2016a). Dynamism in exchange structure. English Text Construction, 9(1), 33–55. Berry, M. (2016b). On describing contexts of situation. In Society in Language, Language in society (pp. 184–205). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Berry, M. (2017). Stratum, delicacy, realisation and rank. In T. Bartlett and G. O’Grady (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Systemic Functional Linguistics (pp. 42–55). London/New York: Routledge. Berry, M. (2019). The clause: An overview of the lexicogrammar. In G. Thompson, W. Bowcher, L. Fontaine, and D. Schönthal (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Systemic Functional Linguistics (pp. 92–117). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bowcher, W. (1999). Investigating institutionalization in context. In M. Ghadessy (ed.), Text and Context in Functional Linguistics (pp. 141–176). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Bowcher, W. (2017). Field, tenor and mode. In T. Bartlett and G. O’Grady (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Systemic Functional Linguistics (pp. 391–403). London/ New York: Routledge.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press

133

134

REBEKAH WEGENER AND LISE FONTAINE

Bowcher. W. (2018). The semiotic sense of context vs the material sense of context. Functional Linguistics, 5(5), 1–19. Butler, C. (2003). Structure and Function: A Guide to Three Major Structural-Functional Theories, Part I: Approaches to the Simplex Clause (Studies in Language Companion Series 63). Philadelphia, PA/Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Butler, C. (2004). Corpus studies and functional linguistic theories. Functions of Language, 11(2), 147–186. Butler, C., and Gonzálvez-García, F. (2014). Exploring Functional-Cognitive Space. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Butt, D. (1999/2004). Parameters of Context. Mimeo Sydney: Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University. Butt, D., and Wegener, R. (2008). The work of concepts: Context and metafunction in the systemic functional model. In R. Hasan, C. M. I. M. Matthiessen, and J. Webster (eds.), Continuing Discourse on Language, Vol. II: A Functional Perspective (pp. 589–618). London: Equinox. Byrnes, H. (2019). Applying SFL for understanding and fostering instructed second language development. In G. Thompson, W. L. Bowcher, L. Fontaine, and D. Schonthal (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Systemic Functional Linguistics (pp. 512–536). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cassens, J. and Wegener, R. (2008). Making use of abstract concepts: Systemic functional linguistics and ambient intelligence. In M. Bramer (ed.), Artificial Intelligence in Theory and Practice II, IFIP 20th World Computer Congress, IFIP AI Stream, vol. 276 of IFIP (pp. 205–214). Milan: Springer. Clarke, B. P. (2013). The differential patterned occurrence of ellipsis in texts varied for contextual mode: Some support for the “mode of discourse-textual metafunction” hook-up? In G. O’Grady, T. Bartlett, and L. Fontaine (eds.), Choice in Language: Applications in Text Analysis (pp. 269–297). Sheffield: Equinox. Daneš, F. (1987). On Prague school functionalism in linguistics. In R. Dirven and V. Fried (eds.), Functionalism in Linguistics (pp. 3–38). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Dirven, R., and Fried, V. (1987). Functionalism in Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Ellis, J. (1966). On contextual meaning. In C. E. Bazell, J. C. Catford, M. A. K. Halliday, and R. H. Robins (eds.), In Memory of Firth (pp. 79–95). London: Longman. Fawcett, R. (1980). Cognitive Linguistics and Social Interaction: Towards an Integrated Model of a Systemic Functional Grammar and the Other Components of an Interacting Mind. Heidelberg: Julius Groos. Fawcett, R. (1990). The COMMUNAL project: Two years old and going well. Network: News, Views and Reviews in Systemic Linguistics and Related Areas, 13, 35–39. Fawcett, R. (2000). A Theory of Syntax for Systemic Functional Linguistics. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Fawcett, R. (2015). System networks, codes, and knowledge of the universe. In R. Fawcett, M. Halliday, S. Lamb, and A. Makkai (eds.), Semiotics of Culture and Language, Vol. II: Language and Other Semiotic Systems of Culture (Linguistics: Bloomsbury Academic Collections) (pp. 135–180). London: Bloomsbury Academic.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press

5 A Functional Approach to Context

Fontaine, L., Bartlett, T., and O’Grady, G. (2013). Systemic Functional Linguistics: Exploring Choice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fontaine, L., and Schönthal, D. (2019). The rooms of the house: Grammar at group rank. In G. Thompson, W. Bowcher, L. Fontaine, and D. Schönthal (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Systemic Functional Linguistics (pp. 118–141). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. François, J. (2018). The stance of Systemic Functional Linguistics amongst functional(ist) theories of language and its “systemic” purpose. In A. Sellami-Baklouti and L. Fontaine (eds.), Perspectives from Systemic Functional Linguistics (pp. 6–25). London: Routledge. Frazer, J. G. (1922). The Golden Bough. New York: Macmillan. Gleason, H. A. (1965). Linguistics and English Grammar. New York: Holt, Reinhart and Winston. Gregory, M., and Carroll, S. (1978). Language and Situation: Language Varieties and Their Social Contexts. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Grimshaw, A., ed. (1994). What’s Going On Here? Complementary Studies of Professional Talk (Advances in Discourse Processes, Vol. 43). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Halliday, M. A. K. (1973). Language in a Social Perspective: Explorations in the Functions of Language. London: Edward Arnold. Halliday, M. A. K. (1974). Interview with M. A. K. Halliday. In H. Parret (ed.), Discussing Language (pp. 81–120). The Hague: Mouton. Halliday, M. A. K. (1978). Language as Social Semiotic: The Social Interpretation of Language and Meaning. London: Edward Arnold. Halliday, M. A. K. (1979/2002). Modes of meaning and modes of expression: Types of grammatical structure and their determination by different semantic functions. In Jonathan Webster (ed.), The Collected Works of M. A. K. Halliday, Vol. I: On Grammar (pp. 196–218). London/New York: Continuum. Halliday, M. A. K. (1981/2002). Text semantics and clause grammar: How is a text like a clause? In Jonathan Webster (ed.), The Collected Works of M. A. K. Halliday, Vol. I: On Grammar (pp. 219–260). London/New York: Continuum. Halliday, M. A. K. (1991). Corpus linguistics and probabilistic grammar. In K. Aijmer and B. Altenberg (eds.), English Corpus Linguistics: Studies in Honour of Jan Svartvik. (pp. 30–44). New York/London: Longman. Halliday, M. A. K. (1991/2007). The notion of “context” in language education. In Jonathan Webster (ed.), The Collected Works of M. A. K. Halliday, Vol. IX: Language and Education (pp. 269–290). London: Equinox. Halliday, M. A. K. (1992). New ways of meaning: The challenge to applied linguistics. In M. Putz (ed.), Thirty Years of Linguistic Evolution (pp. 59–97). Philadelphia/ Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Halliday, M. A. K. (1994/2002a). So you say “pass” . . . thank you three muchly. In Jonathan Webster (ed.), The Collected Works of M. A. K. Halliday, Vol. II: Linguistic Studies of Text and Discourse (pp. 228–254). London: Continuum. Halliday, M. A. K. (1994/2002b). How do you mean? In Jonathan Webster (ed.), The Collected Works of M. A. K. Halliday, Vol. I: On Grammar (pp. 352–368). London/ New York: Continuum. Halliday, M. A. K. (1995). On language in relation to the evolution of human consciousness. In S. Allen (ed.), Of Thoughts and Words: Proceedings of Nobel Symposium 92:

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press

135

136

REBEKAH WEGENER AND LISE FONTAINE

“The Relation between Language and Mind” (pp. 45–84). London: Imperial College Press. Halliday, M. A. K. (1997/2002). Text as semantic choice in social contexts (1977). In Jonathan Webster (ed.), The Collected Works of M. A. K. Halliday, Vol. II: Linguistic Studies of Text and Discourse (pp. 23–84). London: Continuum. Halliday, M. A. K. (2002). Introduction: A Personal Perspective. In J. Webster (ed.), The Collected Works of M. A. K. Halliday, Vol. I: On Grammar (pp. 1–16). London/ New York: Continuum. Halliday, M. A. K. 2003. On Language and Linguistics, Vol. III, The Collected Works of M. A. K. Halliday, ed. J. Webster. Continuum: London. Halliday, M. A. K. (2013). Meaning as choice. In L. Fontaine, T. Bartlett, and G. O’Grady (eds.), Systemic Functional Linguistics: Exploring Choice (pp. 15–36). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Halliday, M. A. K. and Matthiessen, C. M. I. M. (2004/2014). An Introduction to Functional Grammar, 3rd ed. London: Edward Arnold. Hasan, R. (1978). Text in the systemic functional model. In W. Dressler (ed.), Current Trends in Text Linguistics (pp. 228–246). Berlin: Walter Gruyter. Hasan, R. (1980). What’s going on: A dynamic view of context. In The Seventh LACUS Forum (pp. 106–121). Columbia, SC: Hornbeam Press. Hasan, R. (1984). What kind of resource is language? Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 7(1), 57–85. Hasan, R. (1995). The conception of context in text. In P. H. Fries and M. Gregory (eds.), Discourse in Society: Systemic Functional Perspectives. Meaning and Choice in Language: Studies for Michael Halliday (pp. 183–283). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Hasan, R. (1999). Speaking with reference to context. In M. Ghadessy (ed.), Text and Context in Functional Linguistics: Systemic Perspectives (pp. 219–328). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Hasan, R. (2004). Analysing discursive variation. In L. Young and C. Harrison (eds.), Systemic Functional Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis: Studies in Social Change (pp. 15–52). London: Continuum. Hasan, R. (2010). The meaning of “not” is not in “not.” In A. Mahboob and N. Knight (eds.), Appliable Linguistics (pp. 267–306). London/New York: Continuum. Hasan, R. (2014). Towards a paradigmatic description of context: Systems, metafunctions, and semantics. Functional Linguistics, 1(9), 1–54. Langacker, R. (2019). Construal. In E. Dąbrowska and D. Divjak (eds.), Cognitive Linguistics: Foundations of Language (pp. 140–166). Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. Lukin, A. (2017). Ideology and the text-in-context relation. Functional Linguistics, 4 (16), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40554-017-0050-8. Lukin, A., Moore, A., Herke, M., Wegener, R., and Wu, C. (2011). Halliday’s model of register revisited and explored. Linguistics and the Human Sciences, 187–213. Maiorani, A. (2017). Making meaning through movement: A functional grammar of dance. In M. G. Sindoni, J. Wildfeuer, and K. L. O’Halloran (eds.), Mapping Multimodal Performance Studies (pp. 39–60). London/New York: Routledge.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press

5 A Functional Approach to Context

Martin, J. (1985). Process and text: Two aspects of human semiosis. In J. D. Benson, and W. S. Greaves (eds.), Systemic Perspectives on Discourse, Vol. I (pp. 248–274). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Martin, J. (1992). English Text: System and Structure. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Martin, J. (1993). A contextual theory of language. In W. Cope and M. Kalantzis (eds.), The Powers of Literacy: A Genre Approach to Teaching Literacy (Critical Perspectives on Literacy and Education) (pp. 116–136). London: Falmer. Martin, J. (1997). Analysing genre: Functional parameters. In F. Christie and J. Martin (eds.), Genre and Institutions: Social Processes in the Workplace and School (pp. 3–39). London: Cassell. Martin, J. (2019). Discourse semantics. In G. Thompson, W. L. Bowcher, L. Fontaine, and D. Schonthal (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Systemic Functional Linguistics (pp. 358–381). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Matthiessen, C. M. (2015). Register in the round: Registerial cartography. Functional Linguist, 2(9), 1–48. Matthiessen, C. Wang, B., and Ma, Y. (2019). Expounding register and registerial cartography in systemic functional linguistics: An interview with Christian M. I. M. Matthiessen, WORD, 65(2), 93–106. https://doi.org/10.1080/00437956 .2019.1599544. Mickan, P. (2019). Language and education. In G. Thompson, W. L. Bowcher, L. Fontaine, and D. Schonthal (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Systemic Functional Linguistics (pp. 537–560). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mitchell, T. F. (1957/1975). The language of buying and selling in Cyrenaica: A situational statement. In T. F. Mitchell (ed.), Principles of Firthian Linguistics (pp. 1–41). London: Longman. Moore, A. (2019). Language and medicine. In G. Thompson, W. L. Bowcher, L. Fontaine, and D. Schönthal (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Systemic Functional Linguistics (pp. 651–695). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moore, A. R. (2020). Progress and tensions in modelling register as a semantic configuration. Language, Context and Text: The Social Semiotics Forum, 2(1), 22–58. Nerlich, B. (1990). Change in Language: Whitney, Breal and Wegener. London: Routledge. Nerlich, B., and Clarke, D. (1996). Language, Action and Context: The Early History of Pragmatics in Europe and America. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Newmeyer, F. (2001). The Prague School and North American functionalist approaches to syntax. Journal of Linguistics, 37(1), 101–126. O’Donnell, M. (1999). Context in dynamic modelling. In M. Ghadessy (ed.), Text and Context in Functional Linguistics (pp. 63–99). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. O’Donnell, M. (2020). On the abstractness of levels of description in Systemic Functional Linguistics. In G. Tucker, G. Huang, L. Fontaine, and E. McDonald (eds.), Approaches to Systemic Functional Grammar: Convergence and Divergence (pp. 57–75). London: Equinox.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press

137

138

REBEKAH WEGENER AND LISE FONTAINE

O’Donnell, M. (2021). Dynamic modelling of context: Field, tenor and mode revisited. Lingua, 261, 102952. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2020.102952. O’Halloran, K. L., Tan, S., and Wignell, P. (2019). SFL and multimodal discourse analysis. In G. Thompson, W. L. Bowcher, L. Fontaine, and D. Schonthal (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Systemic Functional Linguistics (pp. 433–461). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Polguère, A. (2015). Lexical contextualism: The Abélard Syndrome. In N. Gala, R. Rapp, and G. Bel-Enguix (eds.), Language Production, Cognition, and the Lexicon, 48 (pp. 53–73). London: Springer. Rebori, V. (2002). The legacy of J. R. Firth: A report on recent research. Historiographia Linguistica, 29(1/2), 165–190. Stöckl, H. (2019). Linguistic multimodality – multimodal linguistics: A state-of-the-art sketch. In J. Wildfeuer, J. Pflaeging, J. Bateman, O. Seizoy, and C.-I. Tseng (eds.), Multimodality: Disciplinary Thoughts and the Challenge of Diversity (pp. 41–68). Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. Tam, K. (2017). Context and meaning in the Sydney architecture of systemic functional linguistics? In T. Bartlett and G. O’Grady (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Systemic Functional Linguistics (pp. 438–456). London/New York: Routledge. Taverniers, M. (2011). The syntax–semantics interface in Systemic Functional Grammar: Halliday’s interpretation of the Hjelmslevian model of stratification. Journal of Pragmatics, 43(4), 1100–1126. Taverniers, M. (2019). Semantics. In G. Thompson, W. Bowcher, L. Fontaine, and D. Schönthal, D. (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Systemic Functional Linguistics (pp. 55–91). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thompson, G. (1999). Acting the part: Lexico-grammatical choices and contextual factors. In M. Ghadessy (ed.), Text and Context in Functional Linguistics (pp. 101–124). Philadelphia, PA/Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Ure, J. (1969). Practical register: Parts I and II. English Language Teaching, 23(1/2). van Dijk, T. (2005). Contextual knowledge management in discourse production. A CDA perspective. In R. Wodak and P. Chilton (eds.), A New Agenda in (Critical) Discourse Analysis. (pp. 71–100) Amsterdam: John Benjamins. van Dijk, T. (2006). Discourse, context and cognition. Discourse Studies, 8(1), 159–177. Ventola, E. (1983). Contrasting schematic structures in service encounter. Applied Linguistics, 4, 242–258. Wegener, R. (2011). Parameters of context: From theory to model and application. Ph.D. thesis, Macquarie University, Sydney. Wegener, R. (2016). Studying language in society and society through language: Context and multimodal communication. In W. Bowcher and J. Liang (eds.), Society in Language, Language in Society: Essays in Honour of Ruqaiya Hasan (pp. 227–248). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Wegener, R., and Cassens, J. (2019). Blending SFL and Activity Theory to model communication and artefact use: Examples from human–computer interaction. In M. Kaltenbacher and H. Stöckl (eds.), Analyzing the Media: A Systemic Functional Approach (pp. 167–188). London: Equinox. Wegener, R., Cassens, J., and Butt, D. (2008). Start making sense: Systemic-functional linguistics and ambient intelligence. Revue d’Intelligence Artificielle 22(5), 629–645.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press

5 A Functional Approach to Context

Williams, J., Russell, N., and Irwin, D. (2017). On the notion of abstraction in systemic functional linguistics. Functional Linguistics, 4(13). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40554017-0047-3. Zappavigna, M. 2019. Language and social media. In G. Thompson, W. Bowcher, L. Fontaine, and D. Schonthal (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Systemic Functional Linguistics (pp. 715–738). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press

139

6 The Grammar of Incremental Language Production in Context J. Lachlan Mackenzie

6.1 Introduction There are two basic perspectives to be taken on a clause. It can be seen principally as a hierarchical structure or as a succession of units. Hierarchical syntactic analysis is most saliently exemplified in contemporary linguistics by phrase-structure trees. These serve to bring out language users’ tacit knowledge of relationships among constituents of the clause. They show which elements are closely related and which are more distantly connected. Hierarchical analysis can take the form either of constituency diagrams that display relations of sisterhood between co-constituents of a hierarchically higher constituent or of dependency diagrams that show the hierarchy of headmodifier relations between elements. Such hierarchical representations are particularly prominent in approaches to syntax that focus on linguistic competence: Their aim is to lay bare language users’ underlying knowledge of the syntactic potential of their language. In some such approaches, the syntactic analysis is limited to indicating relationships of constituency or dependency, with the left-to-right (or earlier-to-later) order of elements being regarded as a matter of phonology. By contrast, an emphasis on the succession of syntactic units is more typical of grammatical approaches that foreground performance and language processing. Here the focus is on representing the timecourse of the utterance, the gradual, incremental build-up of the clause as one component unit follows the other in real time. While an emphasis on hierarchy tends to be associated with grammars that abstract away from contexts of use and accentuate the grammaticality of sentences, the incrementalist approach generally views language use as situated action and stresses the achievement of situation-appropriateness. This involves a consideration of how an utterance reflects a language user’s communicative goals and needs and the context in which they are conversing with their interlocutor(s). Whereas the perspective that privileges the attribution of

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

6 The Grammar of Incremental Language Production

a hierarchical structure understandably focuses chiefly on complete clauses and relies heavily on intuitive judgments of well-formedness, the alternative incrementalist view is more open to including incomplete or fragmentary clauses in the purview of syntax and to drawing its data from transcriptions of verbal interaction. The present chapter aims to bring out how such incrementalist approaches to grammar have developed in tandem with psycholinguistic modeling of language production and comprehension. An important emphasis of the chapter will be on how aspects of the multisensory situational context are rapidly integrated into language users’ processing strategies. Against this background, we will see that research has been moving in the direction of an integration of the two perspectives distinguished in the opening paragraphs. In terms of the structure of the chapter, Section 6.2 will sketch how work on contextually embedded language processing has had implications for the well-established hierarchical analysis of syntactic units, while Section 6.3 will consider various approaches that privilege incremental processing. Section 6.4 will turn to findings relating to the emergence of hierarchy from sequence and thus the integration of the two perspectives, and Section 6.5 will close the chapter by considering the matter from the viewpoint of dialogue.

6.2 Hierarchical Structure Defended, Curbed, and Challenged The strongest measure of hierarchization in a constituent structure tree is achieved by uniformly imposing binary branching, i.e., limiting the number of co-constituents (“sisters”) to two. This is notably characteristic of Chomsky’s Minimalist Program (Boeckx 2006) within generative grammar, as a result of the generalized application of the operation Merge, which combines exactly two elements, a and b, to form a set b {a, b}, where a and b are immediate constituents of a more embracing unit b. As Kornmesser (2019: 505; italics in original) points out, “postulating merge to take at least and at most two syntactic objects and hence to produce binary branching structures is considered to satisfy the requirement of economy.”1 Several assumptions of generative grammar, minimalist or not, notably the presence of various “empty” elements in the tree structure and the analysis of certain morphological phenomena as “syntactic” and as binary-branching phrases, as well as the absorption of semantic phenomena such as Tense and pragmatic phenomena such as Topic, Focus, Contrast, and even (illocutionary) Force into syntax, again in the form of branching phrases, all contribute to a very high degree of hierarchization. Extreme hierarchization is particularly evident in so-called cartographic approaches to generative syntax (e.g., 1

This institutionalizes what has been the norm in generative grammar since the eighties; earlier work did embrace ternary branching (cf. Luraghi and Prodi 2013: 206).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

141

142

J. LACHLAN MACKENZIE

Cinque 1999; Rizzi 2004), which entail abundantly branching analyses, with over thirty “projections” just for adverbial modifiers.2 Ray Jackendoff, once a major figure in generative syntax (1977), has come to reject such “syntactocentric” approaches, proposing (Culicover and Jackendoff 2005; Jackendoff and Audring 2020) alternative models (Simpler Syntax and Relational Morphology respectively), in which constituent structure is retained but no longer restricted to binary branching and is freed from non-syntactic notions. In this approach, syntax is one of three modules of a Parallel Architecture (phonological structures; syntactic structures; semantic/conceptual structures) that coexist in the grammar. For comparable but distinct architectures of this kind, see Functional Discourse Grammar (which has four modules, one of them devoted to pragmatics; Hengeveld and Mackenzie 2008) and the Autonomous Modular approach of Sadock (2012; with six modules). Culicover and Jackendoff (2005) defend what they call their “relatively flat” (p. 108), multiple-branching structures, and as they point out, these structures are analogous to what has been proposed in other offshoots of the generative paradigm such as Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG; Bresnan 2001),3 HeadDriven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG; Pollard and Sag 1994)4 as well as the more practical grammar of English edited by Huddleston and Pullum (2002); to quote an observation by Culicover and Jackendoff (2005: 107) that will be significant for later sections of this chapter, an emphasis on sequence rather than hierarchy reflects “the view of syntax generally adopted in psycholinguistic research.” This line of thought is followed up to an extreme degree by Jackendoff and Wittenberg (2014), who argue that there are certain forms of linguistic organization that dispense with hierarchical structure altogether. They defend the view that in pidgins, late L2 acquisition, “home signs” (i.e., spontaneously arising gestural languages), agrammatic aphasia, and even certain fully functional languages such as Riau Malay, the sequence of syntactic units is purely linear, with no hierarchy being detectable. This is a situation which they model by having semantic/conceptual structure map directly onto phonological structure without any syntactic structure coming into play (i.e. an architecture with only two modules). The ultimate position along this trajectory of thought – the claim that syntax is not needed for any language – is defended by Nordström (2017), who argues that Merge is not implementable and proposes what she calls a “flat structure” (p. 697), which, again significantly, she qualifies as being “much more in line with language production and comprehension” (p. 702). Steedman (2022: 22) observes in addition that “[m] 2

3

4

Bošković (2022: 7) interprets Cinque (1999) as espousing the view that “all these projections are present even in both clauses of I said that he left, a sentence with no adverbials.” Representing LFG, Dalrymple and Findlay (2019: 132–133) write that “where there is no strong evidence for the existence of a particular hierarchical structure, we do not feel constrained to nonetheless posit it . . . This avoids the requirements of heavily articulated trees with unpronounced functional elements which a theory restricted to purely binary branching necessitates.” Note, however, that Müller and Machicao y Priemer (2019: 330) do assume binary branching for HPSG.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

6 The Grammar of Incremental Language Production

any languages have freer word order than English, and do not support any clear notion of surface constituency. Even for English, there is no clear consensus on whether the surface structure of the ditransitive VP or the subject auxiliary-inverted question is flat and ternary-branching, leftbranching, or right-branching.” Everett (2015: 361) has written in this regard that Merge “is potentially falsified by any exocentric or non-binary- (ternary-, quaternary-, etc.) branching structure, e.g. a structure with flat syntax.” Although these various proposals to restrain or even abandon hierarchical structure have largely come from critics who share generative grammar’s orientation to competence, it was curiously the appearance of a short paper by Frank et al. (2012) that caused the greatest consternation in generative circles. The introduction to that article makes it clear that the authors do not doubt the importance of hierarchical structure for the description of languages and are merely questioning its relevance for the study of use, which is a matter of performance, i.e., the second approach distinguished here. Nevertheless, the paper’s impact was considerable, and the leading generative grammarian, David Pesetzky, confronted it directly in his plenary lecture to the 2013 Linguistic Society of America’s annual meeting, speaking of Frank et al.’s paper as a “nightmare” and citing Chernyshevsky’s (and Lenin’s) not entirely rhetorical question Что дѣлать? (What Is to Be Done?) in response. It is beyond doubt that grammarians who see themselves as mentalists, as unveiling cognitive structures through their study of language, are sensitive to findings from psycho- and neurolinguistics, and these findings are that binary-branching hierarchical constituent structure is not a given: “[r]ather, considerations of simplicity and evolutionary continuity force us to take sequential structure as fundamental to human language processing. Indeed, this position gains support from a growing body of empirical evidence from cognitive neuroscience, psycholinguistics and computational linguistics” (Frank et al. 2012: 4530). As we shall see in the following section, there are scholars out there, a notable example being Christiansen and Chater (2016), who are willing and able to shake off what they call “Chomsky’s hidden legacy” (p. 6) of focusing on linguistic competence and to explore the implications of not separating the study of grammar from the study of language processing in context.

6.3 Elements of Incremental Syntax Although, as we have seen, mainstream currents in syntax have emphasized constituency (or dependency) and hierarchical structure, there has always been a strong undercurrent of work that has privileged incrementality. This has tended to go hand in hand with the assumption that each increment leads to a reduction in information entropy, understood as the information that the recipient lacks at any point in the construction of a discourse world. Just as, in Groenendijk and Stokhof’s words (2006: 29), “the interpretation of a discourse – a sequence of sentences – takes the form of an incremental

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

143

144

J. LACHLAN MACKENZIE

construction of a discourse representation structure,” so within a sentence, too, the production and comprehension of the various components have been seen as similarly incremental. This notion has found expression in a range of different theoretical initiatives, for example in the Grammar of Speech of Brazil (1995), which reflects an actional view of syntax, seeing the syntactic unit (chiefly the clause) as “something that begins, continues, and ends in time: it happens” (p. 11). In this view, syntactic structures are viewed as the result of the gradual, piecemeal construction of utterances in time. The initial state (i.e., the first increment) sets up a framework of expectation that ultimately leads to the target state, i.e., the final increment. Brazil’s work was continued and developed by Sinclair and Mauranen (2006) in their Linear Unit Grammar, which, as its name suggests, focuses on syntagmatic relations within clauses but goes further in examining how certain successions of units are linked together to form “chunks.” They stress (pp. 130, 134) that chunking is a “pre-theoretical term” and not an exact science in the way that constituent structure analysis seeks to be exact. In fact, they see the very flexibility of their conceptual framework as advantageous in permitting cross-speaker variation within an overall speech community. This emphasis on the practical benefits of approximation will return in various psycholinguistic approaches that encompass the notion of “good enough” processing. This perspective on syntax engenders a particular view of minimal or holophrastic utterances, those that consist of one chunk only. Whereas these have been seen from the viewpoint of hierarchical syntax as reductions of full clauses, the incrementalist position views them as complete within the context in which they occur. For example, in one-chunk answers to questions, the question itself provides a large amount of the context in which the brief answer will be understood. Similarly, holophrastic greetings will typically elicit an equally holophrastic response. The ubiquitous occurrence of minimal utterances in conversation follows, given a sufficiently rich context, from the Gricean Maxim of Quantity, which enjoins the language user to invest a linguistic expression with no more (and obviously no less) information than the interlocutor requires for satisfactory interpretation. Levinson (1987: 68), too, proposes a Maxim of Minimization “Say as little as necessary,” that is, “produce the minimal linguistic clues to achieve your communicational ends.” Many utterances in adult language are of course not minimal in this sense, and the logic of the incrementalist approach is that these are sophistications of the holophrase rather than the latter being an elliptical version of the former. As will be immediately clear, this direction of argument recapitulates the familiar series of stages in child language acquisition, where the child initially produces single-word utterances (“the holophrastic stage”) and then progresses gradually to more complex utterances. Greenfield et al. (1985) apply a Principle of Informativeness to the child’s holophrastic stage, which states that the child will verbalize new rather than given information. At the later two-word stage, the child expresses information that, at the preceding stage, could only be inferred by the addressee from gestural or intonational means

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

6 The Grammar of Incremental Language Production

and/or by drawing on the context. The underlying assumption is that we communicate in order to draw attention to variability in the environment, that is, what is novel, changing, or alternative. For example, if a mother rolls a ball to her infant, the latter will utter ball rather than Mummy, because it is the ball that is in movement and undergoing transfer, while the mother is relatively static and her agency is presupposed rather than asserted. This insight applies equally well to the adult use of holophrases: for a minimal utterance to function as complete within its context, it must contain the one linguistic clue from which the hearer can read off or infer the crucial information that the speaker wishes to impart. For conversation, this notion is present in Chafe’s (1994: 119, 159) vision of each unit making a “single point” (in both English and the Indigenous language Seneca) and, for writing, in Givón’s (1995: 358) “one-chunk-per-clause” constraint, which states – again using the above-mentioned term of art “chunk” – that “[c]lauses in natural text tend to have only one chunk (usually a word) of new information per clause.” It is worth stressing at this point that it is not just holophrastic utterances that rely on context for full comprehensibility. Full clauses, too, can only be understood in their entirety if they are submitted to inferential interpretive processes: The hearer does not merely incrementally decode (or “parse”) the incoming utterance but also interprets it incrementally in its context in line with his understanding of the ongoing and dynamic discourse situation. This suggests a fundamental continuity between minimal and maximal utterances but also raises the question of how more sophisticated utterances differ from holophrases in their communicative content. The connection lies in the distinction between assertion and presupposition: While a (declarative) holophrase offers only assertion, leaving the presupposed information to be inferred from the context, the fuller utterance contains a combination of asserted and presupposed information. The traditional term “assertion” will, however, not be retained here because it is so strongly associated with declarative illocutions (“statements”). A preferable term is the information-structural notion “focus,” which is neutral with respect to illocutionary distinctions (Hengeveld and Mackenzie 2008: 89 ff.). In a wh-interrogative, for example, be it holophrastic or not, it is the wh-word that functions as its focus, in the sense of identifying the particular piece of information to be elicited from the addressee. Consider (1), cf. Mackenzie (2020: 193): (1)

[Who]focus [were you talking to just now]presupposition?

Here the speaker fills out the utterance by reiterating the interactants’ shared knowledge that the hearer was talking to someone in the immediate past and thereby creates a context for the interaction. She5 could also have invoked the context with greater reliance on inference, as in (2), with the anaphoric pronoun that: (2) 5

[Who]focus [was that]presupposition?

In this chapter, the speaker will be referred to as she and the hearer as he.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

145

146

J. LACHLAN MACKENZIE

Or she could even have formulated it holophrastically, perhaps with a supportive gesture, gaze, or head movement, for example, if the question is whispered surreptitiously to the hearer: (3)

[Who]focus?

He similarly has various answering options: (4)

a. b. c. d.

[I was talking to]presupposition [Bill]focus [just now]presupposition [I was talking to]presupposition [Bill]focus [To]presupposition [Bill]focus [Bill]focus

Since the information about the conversation with Bill not only is shared but has also been explicitly mentioned in the question, the holophrastic answer in (4d) or the near-holophrastic one in (4c) is sufficient. The presupposed information can be repeated in part as in (4b) or in whole as in (4a). But to do this, especially in full, is to opt for the marked option in conversation, which may spark off implicatures (i.e., indirectly communicated meanings), for example that the speaker of (4a) is irritated by the question. It is useful at this stage to bring in a crucial notion from Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG; Hengeveld and Mackenzie 2008), that of the discourse act. A discourse act is a unit of linguistic action that may take the outward form of a full clause, a sequence of phrases that is less than a clause, or a holophrase. Each discourse act is made up of a series of subacts, which together constitute the communicated content of the discourse act. One of these subacts bears the focus of the communicated content (cf. Chafe’s 1994 “single point” or Givón’s 1995 “one chunk” referred to above), while the other subacts, if any, are backgrounded. FDG’s more action-oriented approach allows us to move away from counting only single words as holophrases: They are not identified in morphosyntax but rather at the level of the pragmatic activities of reference and ascription (Searle 1969). Just as children at the holophrastic stage may use certain word combinations as unanalyzed wholes (allgone, allfalldown), so formulaic or prefabricated units (of different degrees of rigidity) also play an important role in adult usage, being interwoven with more compositional elements. Wray (2002: 8) points out that “[o]nly with the new generation of grammatical theories, based on performance rather than competence . . ., has the idea of holistically managed chunks of language been slowly reinstated, and its implications recognized.” FDG adopts the following compromise with regard to the hierarchy‒ sequence debate (Mackenzie 2014a): Syntax is seen as primarily linear, while pragmatic and semantic organization are predominantly hierarchical, with the hierarchies in question representing scope relations (e.g., subacts scoping under discourse acts, or states-of-affairs scoping under propositional contents). Now, when it comes to the syntactic description of incrementally composed utterances, FDG recognizes various salient (so-called “absolute”) positions in the linear order of the various morphosyntactic units, first and

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

6 The Grammar of Incremental Language Production

foremost among which is the initial position (PI). Morphosyntactic units that correspond to the upper reaches of the pragmatic and semantic scopal hierarchies that describe the formulation of the discourse act have prior access to those absolute positions. For example, discourse markers, which are analyzed as modifiers of the discourse act, tend to be placed in initial position by virtue of their high position in the pragmatic hierarchy, which represents wide scope. Returning now to holophrases (or one-chunk utterances), these correspond to discourse acts whose communicated content contains only one subact, necessarily (or “trivially”) marked as focus. They thus rightfully claim the absolute initial position, even in the absence of further material. Thus, all the following examples will be assigned to the initial position of the syntactic unit: (5)

a. b. c. d. e.

Brilliant. Goal! Arthur! Ball. (as in holophrastic-stage child speech) Allgone. (as in holophrastic-stage child speech)

Things become more interesting where the communicated content contains more subacts, as in the following examples: (6)

a. b. c. d. e.

That was brilliant. They scored a goal! Hey Arthur! Mummy ball. (as in two-word-stage child speech) Banana allgone. (as in two-word-stage child speech)

What we see in (6), as compared to (5), is that units expressing other (nonfocus) subacts have usurped PI, pushing the focus unit to a later position in the sequence. Here the “minimization” advantage of the smallest possible expression in (5) has been abandoned in favor of providing sufficient contextual grounding for the hearer: in (6a), for example, the initial that, possibly accompanied by a gesture, provides the hearer with some indication of what the speaker finds to be brilliant. However, there are advantages for the speaker, too, in formulating a discourse act non-holophrastically. As Wagner (2016) points out, “[s]tudies from the production planning literature [in psycholinguistics, JLM] have found that one crucial factor in such word order choices is that speakers tend to realize constituents encoding more active and accessible referents earlier in the sentence.” In other words, speakers can in practice gain precious milliseconds from not encoding the focus immediately, but anchoring it in knowledge that is already “active” (i.e., energetically present in the common ground) and accessible (i.e., relatively easily retrieved, for both parties). In FDG terms, such subacts are known as topics, defined technically as “signalling how the Communicated Content relates to the gradually constructed record in the Contextual Component” (Hengeveld and Mackenzie 2008: 92), where the Contextual Component is an

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

147

148

J. LACHLAN MACKENZIE

extra-grammatical module that implements the notion of a shared “common ground” of contextual assumptions. Since topic, like focus, is assigned to a subact, the two are found at the same hierarchical level of pragmatic organization, and therefore if syntactic order reflects hierarchical status, languages may be expected to differ in which “wins out” in terms of access to the initial position PI. In English, generally, it is the topic unit – which is often also the clausal subject – that goes to initial position, pushing the focus unit further to the end. By contrast, in Nootka (Fortescue 2004: 155), the element considered by the speaker to be the most “newsworthy” (a notion that correlates with focus status) remains in initial position, in keeping with a “strategy . . . found in many North American languages with pragmatically controlled word order.” In English, too, of course, there are constructions in which the focus retains its initial positioning, most notably in wh-interrogatives, where the wh-word – cf. (1)–(3) above – is the focus of the question. This also applies in what Hannay (1991) calls the “reaction mode” of declarative discourse acts, as in (7): (7)

Brilliant that was!

where accessible information (that) is mentioned but is denied the status of topic, since (7) is not presented as being about “that.” Since the only pragmatic function present in (7) is the focus, it has no rival for initial position and that is where it appears. The phonological phrase that was in (7) can feel almost like an afterthought to a holophrase and is accordingly pronounced on a low, flat contour. The approach being sketched here applies without further ado to declaratives, be they exclamative or not. However, with other illocutions (interrogative, imperative), in English it is the marker of illocutionary status that appears in PI, reflecting the fact that in pragmatic organization these are hierarchically higher than the subacts that carry the functions topic or focus. The result is that any topic unit is pushed to a later position and the focus unit even later: (8)

a. Does (PI) that (Top > PI+1) matter (Foc > PI+2) ?[Interrogative] b. Give (PI) me (PI+1) a pen (Foc > PI+2) ! [Imperative]

The effect of postponing the focus unit can lead to an analytical decision to associate focus status (at least in certain configurations) with clause-final position (PF), where the language user’s strategy is geared to exploiting the very prominence of that final position (a strategy recognized in the literature as “end focus”).

6.4 Incrementality and Prediction in Production and Comprehension Finding the balance between accessibility (with such associated notions as grounding, topicality, and processing ease) and the need to make one’s point

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

6 The Grammar of Incremental Language Production

quickly in the rapid to and fro of dialogue (with associated notions like focality and attention) has been the subject of increasing interest in more recent psycholinguistic work. Both in theoretical linguistics and in psycholinguistics, however, there has been a tendency to concentrate on the single language user, doubtless because of the long-established emphasis on language competence and the associated individual cognitive abilities – as well as the logistical difficulties tied to experimentation with multiple subjects in conversation. Chomsky (1965: 3) famously stated that “linguistic theory is concerned with an ideal speaker-listener in a completely homogeneous speech community,” and despite taking issue with this characterization, many functional approaches have adopted a similar orientation to the single language user, as when Hengeveld and Mackenzie (2008: 1–2) present FDG as “a model of grammar [that] will be more effective the more its organization resembles language processing in the individual” (my emphasis). Pickering and Garrod (2021: 11) point out that the very same applies to the cognitive sciences, including psycholinguistics in general, which “have focused on individual rather than joint activities. Specifically, there has been little concern with the mental representations and processes that take place within individuals as they participate in joint activities . . . This is the case both for joint activity in general and for dialogue in particular.” Nevertheless, there have been repeated calls for a reorientation to dialogue, and specifically to context-embedded dialogue, in both psycholinguistic and more narrowly linguistic work. This has led to such initiatives in linguistics as Dynamic Syntax (Gregoromichelaki and Kempson 2019: 201), which adopts a view of syntactic structure “where utterances are taken as goal-directed physical actions coordinating with equally goal-directed mental actions within and across speakers . . . such actions are aimed to locally and incrementally alter the affordances of the internal/external context for both one’s self and one’s interlocutors.” The essence of Gregoromichelaki and Kempson’s approach is “a grammar architecture whose core notion is incremental interpretation of word sequences (comprehension) or linearisation of contents (production) relative to context” (p. 192), and their work features such “compound contributions” as (9): (9) A [seeing B emerge from a smoke-filled kitchen]: Did you burn B [interrupting]: myself ? No, fortunately not.

where only the dialogic co-construction of the shared (strictly speaking ungrammatical) utterance Did you burn myself? can explain the occurrence of myself rather than yourself (p. 190). A comparable position is adopted from a more psycholinguistic perspective by Momma and Philips (2018), who argue for a strong measure of similarity between language production and comprehension, specifically with regard to the granularity of incremental processing, that is, the extent to which speakers plan ahead as they utter each unit and the extent to which comprehenders predict upcoming material. The particularities of the language being spoken

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

149

150

J. LACHLAN MACKENZIE

clearly can interfere with what they call the “left-to-right” planning of lexical items in production (Momma and Philips 2018: 246). In a language with gender like German, for example, it seems likely that the (later) head noun will be planned before any associated definite determiner, the form of which is dependent upon the gender of the noun, whereas this is not a relevant factor in English where the definite determiner is invariable: cf. der Aufsatz (‘article,’ masculine) / das Buch (‘book,’ neuter) vs. the article / the book. Similarly, in comprehension, the gender of the definite article in German narrows the expectations of the hearer and, especially in a context that already limits plausible predictions (say, a discussion of academic publications), contributes to efficient processing. In incrementally decoding the initial words of a question Darf ich deinen . . . ‘May I [VERB] your . . .,’ the hearer can discount Buch and entertain Aufsatz as a possible continuation, because of the masculine-accusative marking of deinen, restricting his search space. This greater efficiency is bought, of course, at the expense of remembering the gender of each noun, a long-term memory requirement not imposed on the speaker of English. Much relevant work in psycholinguistics, understood as the study of how language is produced and comprehended, is oriented to laying bare what is involved in those processes. Accordingly, a focus on the timecourse of verbal interaction entails for many psycholinguists (e.g., Chater, McCauley, and Christiansen 2016) that there is no need to posit static and complete knowledge representations (forming a structured and autonomous language competence) that are independent of procedures for language processing, since these are seen as skills that are in large measure comparable with other timebound skills. The challenge is then to understand the mechanisms of those skills as against the limited capacity of working memory. The solution again lies, in ways that are reminiscent of the division of labor proposed in theoretical linguistics, in striking a balance between sequence and hierarchy, whereby successive units are recoded in comprehension into hierarchically higher units through a process, to use a term familiar from Section 6.3, of “chunking.” The resultant chunks are stored in an inventory that Christiansen and Chater (2016: 115) have dubbed a “chunkatory,” using an impromptu term that mimics the informal nature of the chunks that are assembled in this way. These are induced from the processes of comprehension and then immediately become available for production processes, that is, implementable as higher-order units available for incremental sequencing. The resultant sequences themselves form ever larger chunks, ultimately yielding a hierarchy or layered network of chunks of different degrees of inner complexity. There are strong parallels between this so-called Chunkand-Pass approach to production and comprehension (also often referred to as “cascaded processing”) and the proposals of the usage-based work in Construction Grammar (Goldberg 1995), where the structured network representing all of the linguistic units we know – of whatever complexity – is referred to as the “constructicon.”

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

6 The Grammar of Incremental Language Production

Whereas the Construction Grammar tradition focuses on the unification of chunks to form ever more complex signs, i.e., pairings of form and meaning, the psycholinguistic approach is less concerned with building up semantic representations of formal units and more with how they are interpreted, i.e., how they impact on the hearer’s general understanding of what is being said. These processes of interpretation are triggered by the words said but are only very partially linguistic and involve multiple pragmatic considerations such as the identification of referents or the differential status of information units as “new” or “given” and crucially also a range of contextual factors, which can include world knowledge of various degrees of generality or specificity, the visual context, the social context, and a wealth of prior experience of language chunks and of how they have been interpreted in the past. In interpreting linguistic input, the hearer is involved in a very rapid process of updating, using all imaginable aspects of context to fit the incoming information into a consistent and relevant understanding of the ongoing discourse. It is becoming increasingly clear that these interpretation processes have to contend with a massive amount of ambiguity in the linguistic input. Piantadosi et al. (2012) have not only demonstrated the ubiquity of multi-interpretable chunks of language but also argued convincingly that the lack of bijective relations between form and meaning is actually “a desirable property of communication systems” (p. 281) because it keeps utterances short and simple. The apparent shortcomings of the signal are more than adequately compensated for by the fact that context is so richly informative about meaning. Hearers draw on context to infer the intended meaning: Any extra cost that this may entail (typically in the form of abductive reasoning) is fully offset by the benefits of having an efficient system that makes copious reuse of the same resources. As Piantadosi et al. (2012: 283) remark, “when the individual units of [such] an efficient communication system are viewed out of their typical contexts, they will look ambiguous”; however, it is only in linguists’ abstract examples that the appearance of ambiguity is troubling. One famous case of such ambiguous-when-out-of-context sentences is the kind of “garden-path” sentences created by researchers with the intention of leading experimental subjects down a syntactic garden path (the reference here is to an idiom that means “cause to take the wrong route”). The prediction is that because of the constructed ambiguity the subjects, confronted with such a sentence out of context, will parse it in the most obvious way, then discover that their parse leads to a dead-end, backtrack, and finally parse the sentence successfully at the second attempt. A familiar example is The horse raced past the barn fell, where raced is initially parsed as a finite verb in the past tense only for the reader to encounter another finite verb in the past tense (fell): [[The horse]NP [raced past the barn]VP [fell]VP]. The reader then tries again, with raced now as a past participle, and the result is a successful parse: [[The horse raced past the barn]NP [fell]VP]. However, examination of the use of such garden-path sentences in context (Ferreira 2008) has shown that they rarely cause any difficulties because the reader who has already encountered “the horse” (definite and

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

151

152

J. LACHLAN MACKENZIE

specific) will then typically also know whether the horse was being ridden, which would favor the second reading, or running free, which would favor the first. Even the notion of the “most obvious” way to parse a sentence makes an implicit reference to imagined contexts: Since general knowledge tells us that horses are swift animals, it is natural to think of one “racing” and to try that interpretation first. It has been argued that insights into how the pieces of incoming information are integrated into the hearer’s understanding of the ongoing discourse (the Chunk-and-Pass account) are insufficient to account for the astounding rapidity with which speech is processed and with which speakers initiate their turns. Those insights have been supplemented in recent work by a realization that hearers additionally use probabilistic cues to predict future words and chunks, and even how these will be interpreted, massively augmenting the efficiency of language processing. Rappe (2019) refers to this perspective as the Predictive Processing framework. It shares the notion that the hearer converts a linear signal through chunking into a hierarchical representation but differs in making crucial reference to context in the sense of prioritizing higher-level representations, i.e., those that contextualize the ongoing discourse. These relatively general representations become the basis for the hearer’s predictions of what is to come; as Rappe (2019: 362) observes, “[l]inguistic processing is at least minimally predictive in that linguistic stimuli come with some sort of context, even if what we call context is only the previously processed linguistic information. This information reaches and affects the system before the input becomes available and facilitates further processing.” If the context is already activated before any linguistic input arrives, it will only be further enriched once the speech begins to flow. One of the options considered by Rappe is that since the aim of understanding is to achieve a satisfactory interpretation of the discourse as a whole, lower-level representations may not be fully constructed in practice (however much linguists may squabble about the details). This is the notion of “good-enough processing” as first presented by Ferreira et al. (2002), who found that experimental subjects, confronted with out-of-context sentences, regularly come up with interpretations that are at odds with the complete semantic representation of those sentences. Rather than analyzing the meaning in the manner of a semanticist, the language user employs expectations about the discourse context to predict what a sentence will mean and may then also persist with that interpretation despite linguistic evidence to the contrary. In other words, hearers are found to sidestep strict one-by-one incremental build-up of the meaning of sentences and to commit early to higher-level representations. The human brain as a predictive organ is central to Clark’s (2015) proposals for the processing of perceptual information. Rather than a one-way flow of sensory information from the external world to the brain, Clark posits sensory information as a potential corrective to top-down predictions: Incoming stimuli then either confirm the predictions or adjust them for future occasions. The top-down predictions can be so strong as to cause the brain to ignore or

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

6 The Grammar of Incremental Language Production

“explain away” contradictory information. Rappe (2019: 374) received a personal communication from Clark in 2018, speculating that “language has evolved specifically to ‘fit’ our multi-level predictive brains.”

6.5 Dialogue The assumption behind much of the work summarized in the preceding sections is that the human being is inherently social and interactive and that the primary arena for all communication, whether by speech or not, is dialogic interaction in context (Weigand 2017). The grammatical framework to which most attention has been devoted in this chapter, Functional Discourse Grammar, admittedly espouses an architecture that, in line with much grammatical tradition, portrays the linguistic activity of the individual speaker, but that grammar is only part of an overall model of verbal interaction, which assumes the co-presence of an addressee and a “contextual component” to which both dialogists have access and which represents the common ground that is the basis for dialogue. Certain aspects of this context are relatively timestable (e.g., institutional status and roles, or identities in terms of seniority, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, physical ability), while others are in continual flux, reacting to the vicissitudes of the moment, to the continual updates arising from the ongoing interchange (Hengeveld and Mackenzie 2014; Mackenzie 2014b). For a thorough-going consideration of how common ground is constructed in the process of interaction as a “shared workspace,” see Pickering and Garrod (2021). Where the context is relatively stable and mutually understood, communication can in principle take place without any use of language, even between individuals capable of language use: Pointing, other gestures, eye movements, etc. may function as discourse acts and be enough to guarantee successful interaction. There are also specific situations in which silent communication is indeed favored, for example, in hunting to avoid being heard by the prey or in secret gestural behind-the-back communication between doubles partners in a tennis competition, or where the background noise is so intense that gestures are the only way to communicate information. The amount of information that can be imparted in this manner is limited, of course, in the first instance to indexical identification of some aspect of the physical context and human movement within that context. But the dependence upon context is extreme in such communication and it is prone to misunderstandings. The challenge may lie in distinguishing between gestures that arise from a communicative intention and other chance bodily movements that are not designed to convey information. However, there are many situations in which it is perfectly possible for adults who are capable of speech to cooperate without talking. As the Viennese linguist Bühler (1990: 47) pointed out, “Productive and creative man, working in cooperation with his fellows, often remains silent as long as

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

153

154

J. LACHLAN MACKENZIE

each fully understands what the other is doing and acts appropriately.” Such situations can be said to exploit the context of communication to the maximum: Where there is a high measure of common ground, speech is redundant and indeed superfluous. Bühler (1990: 176) asks, “To what end should one speak if one gets on just as well or better in practical life without speaking?” He answers by invoking “islands of language” emerging “from within the sea of silent but unequivocal communication at the places where a differentiation, a diacrisis, a decision between several possibilities has to be made, and easily can be made by interspersing a word,” exemplifying this statement with his memories of earlier times in Vienna when there was a single kind of tram ticket and silent interaction with the conductor sufficed; only with the introduction of simple and transfer tickets did the need for the “empractical” (i.e., standalone) utterances Geradeaus “straight through” and Umsteigen “change” arise. The holophrastic utterances in question are, it should be noted, no more complex than is required in the highly restricted framework of two public transport options. One is an adverb, and the other is a verb in the infinitive form, but each is complete in its context; no misunderstanding is possible. Of course, the major emphasis in studies of dialogic interaction has been on less constrained situations, where the syntax is more sophisticated and the full multimodal mix is available (notably prosody and gesture). The dialogists have a sufficiently shared awareness of the context and sufficient experience of how it interacts with the linguistic cues on offer to make communication in most situations satisfactory for both participants. As has been mentioned in previous sections, language is both an imperfect tool, in that the relation between communicative intentions and linguistic forms is complex and insecure, and also a close-to-perfect tool in making creative use of a restricted set of syntactic and lexical instruments. The result is dialogue as a form of tacit cooperation (even in the case of a furious row between the interlocutors), in which throughout each utterance the operations of chunk-and-pass and of predictive processing actively contribute to the inferences that each is drawing about the other’s communicative intentions. Understanding is never guaranteed, however, and conversations can jump to the meta-level, with requests being made and granted for reformulations, before the conversation returns to the question under discussion. The dialogical perspective upon language use draws attention away from the criterion of grammaticality toward that of situation-appropriateness (Anward and Linell 2016). From the viewpoint of the participants in the dialogue, the ultimate questions are: How much does the utterance contribute to the achievement of our goals as interactants? And how well does it fit into the context in which we find ourselves and which we are co-creating? Prioritizing answers to these questions leads Anward and Linell, in their study of dialogues in Swedish, to make observations that are unattainable with a methodology that considers only sentences in isolation. One is the ubiquity of “responsiveness,” i.e., structures designed to occur in reactive moves, as in (10):

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

6 The Grammar of Incremental Language Production

(10)

a.

b.

å vilken hjälp har du and what help have you ‘And what help did you get?’ inte jättemycke hjälp har NEG awfully.much help have ‘Not awfully much help did I get.’

fått? received ja I

inte NEG

fått. received

The structure with the double negative shown in (10b) only occurs in responses: The initial focus “not awfully much” morphs into a topic “awfully much” with its comment “I did not receive.” The initially placed focus serves the dialogic purpose of answering the question promptly (see the discussion of Hannay’s “reaction mode” in Section 6.3 above), while the topic structure with its reuse of hjälp and fått contributes to the alignment of question and answer. Another property found in the Swedish dialogues is “incrementality,” understood as we have seen as the stepwise build-up of an utterance, with the speaker not knowing exactly how it is going to end; it may even “end up in an incoherent syntactic structure, as judged from conventional sentence grammar” (Anward and Linell 2016: 17; emphasis in original), but without triggering any reformulations or requests for repair. A final property is “syntactic ambiguity,” understood here as referring to multiple internal relations that arise from changes in pragmatic properties in the course of the utterance, as in (11), which is not “grammatical” as it stands but shows evidence of its piecemeal construction in real time: (11)

de va bra (.) att it was good P A U S E that ‘It was good that he did it.’

han he

gjorde. did

In this case, the pronoun de is initially understood as anaphoric; then the delayed incrementation of the “extraposed” subordinate clause renders it cataphoric; and finally, it comes to be interpreted as the object of gjorde. This example shows the dynamic interaction between linguistic form and context: The speaker initially assumes contextual clarification of the implicit reference of de; then after a pause makes this explicit but in the meantime has reinterpreted the de as the topic of the utterance and yet semantically integral to the subordinate clause, which consequently lacks its full complement of arguments. These examples manifest a usage-based view of linguistic data, presented in the form of transcriptions of speech, as protocols of joint action that took place between certain individuals at a certain time in the past. The analyst can discern, in the left-to-right sequencing of data, the effects of those individuals’ incremental co-creation of meaning. However suggestive such linguistic data may be, the need for objective criteria has encouraged the use of various new technologies designed to detect the cognitive processing underlying dialogical speech. It has long been understood, relatively informally, that such matters as speech-accompanying gestures, changes in

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

155

156

J. LACHLAN MACKENZIE

interactants’ direction of gaze, interruptions, and requests for speech repairs can all be treated as clues to what is going on, but it is only fairly recently that equipment for tracking saccades (rapid movements of the eye between fixation points) has become available, allowing precise conclusions to be drawn about how dialogists interpret each other’s disfluencies and prosody. In particular, use is made in laboratory settings of “confederates,” that is, members of the team who enter into dialogue with experimental subjects who are fitted up with the gaze-tracking equipment. The confederates work with scripts that maneuver the naïve subjects toward certain ambiguities, allowing the researchers to infer relevant disambiguating cognitive processes from the subjects’ eye movements (see Brennan and Hanna 2017 for details). It is expected that future developments will reinforce our understanding of the sequences of cognitive processes that underlie the incremental build-up of discourse acts and longer stretches of discourse.

6.6 Conclusion This chapter has offered an overview of developments that reflect a convergence of work in linguistics and psycholinguistics around the implications of the piecemeal composition of units of speech for an understanding of grammar and the cognitive processing that underlies the production, comprehension, and interpretation of utterances. Notions from Functional Discourse Grammar have been employed to present a view of syntactic structure as arising from the incremental expansion of the minimal utterance, the holophrase. By prioritizing the timecourse of language processing, we have interpreted syntactic hierarchy as arising from chunk-and-pass operations, arguably supported by predictive processing. Finally, our attention turned briefly to dialogue as a general framework for the understanding of interaction, communication, and language. All of these notions make essential reference to context as a necessary component of the operations and processes that we have reviewed.

References Anward, J., and Linell, P. (2016). On the grammar of utterances: Putting the form vs. substance distinction back on its feet. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia, 48(1), 35–58. Boeckx, C. (2006). Linguistic Minimalism: Origins, Concepts, Methods, and Aims. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bošković, Ž. (2022). Formalism and, not vs, functionalism. Lingbuzz. https://ling .auf.net/lingbuzz/006337. Brazil, D. (1995). A Grammar of Speech. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brennan, S. E., and Hanna, J. E. (2017). Psycholinguistic approaches: Meaning and understanding. In E. Weigand (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Language and Dialogue (pp. 93–108). New York/Abingdon: Routledge.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

6 The Grammar of Incremental Language Production

Bresnan, J. (2001). Lexical-Functional Syntax. Oxford: Blackwell. Bühler, K. (1990). Theory of Language (trans. of Sprachtheorie, 1934). Amsterdam/ Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Chafe, W. (1994). Discourse, Consciousness and Time. Chicago/London: Chicago University Press. Chater, N., McCauley, S. M., and Christiansen, M. H. (2016). Language as skill: Intertwining comprehension and production. Journal of Memory and Language, 89, 244–254. Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Christiansen, M. H., and Chater, N. (2016). Creating Language: Integrating Evolution, Acquisition, and Processing. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Cinque, G. (1999). Adverbs and Functional Heads: A Cross-linguistic Perspective. New York: Oxford University Press. Clark, A. (2015). Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Culicover, P. W., and Jackendoff, R. (2005). Simpler Syntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dalrymple, M., and Findlay, J. Y. (2019). Lexical functional grammar. In A. Kertész, E. Moravcsik, and C. Rákosi (eds.), Current Approaches to Syntax: A Comparative Handbook (pp. 123–154). Berlin/New York: De Gruyter Mouton. Everett, D. L. (2015). The role of culture in the emergence of language. In B. MacWhinney and W. O’Grady (eds.), The Handbook of Language Emergence (pp. 354–376). Malden, MA/Oxford/Chichester: Wiley Blackwell. Ferreira, F., Bailey, K. G. D., and Ferraro, V. (2002). Good-enough representations in language comprehension. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 11(1), 11–15. Ferreira, V. (2008). Ambiguity, accessibility, and a division of labor for communicative success. Learning and Motivation, 49, 209–246. Fortescue, M. (2004). The complementarity of the process and pattern interpretations of Functional Grammar. In J. L. Mackenzie and M. Á. Gómez González (eds.), A New Architecture for Functional Grammar (pp. 151–178). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Frank, S. L., Bod, R., and Christiansen, M. H. (2012). How hierarchical is language use? Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 279 (1747), 4522–4531. Givón, T. (1995). Functionalism and Grammar. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Goldberg, A. (1995). A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Greenfield, P., Reilly, J., Leaper, C., and Baker, N. (1985). The structural and functional status of single-word utterances and their relationship to early multi-word speech. In M. Barrett (ed.), Children’s Single-Word Speech (pp. 233–267). Chichester: Wiley. Gregoromichelaki, E., and Kempson, R. (2019). Procedural syntax. In K. Scott, B. Clark, and R. Carston (eds.), Relevance, Pragmatics and Interpretation: Essays in Honour of Deirdre Wilson (pp. 209–246). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Groenendijk, J., and Stokhof, M. (2006). Dynamic semantics. In K. Brown (ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd ed. (Vol. IV, pp. 28–33). Oxford: Elsevier. Hannay, M. (1991). Pragmatic function assignment and word order variation in a functional grammar of English. Journal of Pragmatics, 16, 131–155.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

157

158

J. LACHLAN MACKENZIE

Hengeveld, K., and Mackenzie, J. L. (2008). Functional Discourse Grammar: A Typologically-Based Theory of Language Structure. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hengeveld, K., and Mackenzie, J. L. (2014). Grammar and context in Functional Discourse Grammar. Pragmatics, 24(2), 203–227. Huddleston, R., and Pullum, G. K., eds. (2002). The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jackendoff, R. (1977). X’ Syntax: A Study of Phrase Structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Jackendoff, R., and Audring, J. (2020). The Texture of the Lexicon: Relational Morphology and the Parallel Architecture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jackendoff, R., and Wittenberg, E. (2014). What you can say without syntax: A hierarchy of grammatical complexity. In F. J. Newmeyer and L. B. Preston (eds.), Measuring Linguistic Complexity (pp. 65–82). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kornmesser, S. (2019). The multiparadigmatic structure of science and generative grammar. In A. Kertész, E. Moravcsik, and C. Rákosi (eds.), Current Approaches to Syntax: A Comparative Handbook (pp. 493–520). Berlin/New York: De Gruyter Mouton. Levinson, S. C. (1987). Minimization and conversational inference. In M. Bertuccelli Papi and J. Verschueren (eds.), The Pragmatic Perspective: Selected Papers from the 1985 International Pragmatics Conference (pp. 61–129). Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Luraghi, S., and Parodi, C., eds. (2013). The Bloomsbury Companion to Syntax. London/New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Mackenzie, J. L. (2014a). Morphosyntax in Functional Discourse Grammar. In A. Carnie, D. Siddiqi, and Y. Sato (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Syntax (pp. 627–646). London: Routledge. Mackenzie, J. L. (2014b). The Contextual Component in a dialogic FDG. Pragmatics, 24(2), 249–273. Mackenzie, J. L. (2020). Functional approaches. In B. Aarts, J. Bowie, and G. Popova (eds.), Oxford Handbook of English Grammar (pp. 180–200). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Momma, S., and Phillips, C. (2018). The relationship between parsing and generation. Annual Review of Linguistics, 4, 233–254. Müller, S., and Machicao y Priemer, A. (2019). Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar. In A. Kertész, E. Moravcsik, and C. Rákosi (eds.), Current Approaches to Syntax: A Comparative Handbook (pp. 317–359). Berlin/New York: De Gruyter Mouton. Nordström, J. (2017). Language without narrow syntax. The Linguistic Review, 34(4), 687–740. Pesetsky, D. (2013). Что дѣлать? What is to be done? Plenary talk to the annual meeting of the Linguistics Society of America, January 4, 2013. Piantadosi, S. T., Tily, H., and Gibson, E. (2012). The communicative function of ambiguity in language. Cognition, 122 (3), 280–291. Pickering, M. J., and Garrod, S. (2021). Understanding Dialogue: Language Use and Social Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pollard, C., and Sag, I. (1994). Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

6 The Grammar of Incremental Language Production

Rappe, S. (2019). Now, never, or coming soon? Prediction and efficient language processing. Pragmatics & Cognition, 26(2/3), 357–385. Rizzi, L., ed. (2004). The Structure of CP and IP: The Cartography of Syntactic Structures, Vol. II. New York: Oxford University Press. Sadock, J. M. (2012). The Modular Architecture of Grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Searle, J. (1969). Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sinclair, J., and Mauranen, A. (2006). Linear Unit Grammar: Integrating Speech and Writing. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Steedman, M. (2022). Combinatory Categorial Grammar. https://homepages .inf.ed.ac.uk/steedman/papers/ccg/moravcsik2.pdf. Wagner, M. (2016). Information structure and production planning. In C. Féry and S. Ishihara (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Information Structure (pp. 541–561). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Weigand, E. (2017). The concept of language in an utterance grammar. In E. Weigand (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Language and Dialogue (pp. 214–233). New York/ Abingdon: Routledge. Wray, A. (2002). Formulaic Sequences and the Lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

159

7 Cognitive Linguistics and Context Dirk Geeraerts

7.1 Introduction Cognitive Linguistics, as meant in this chapter, is the linguistic framework represented by handbooks like Evans and Green (2006), Geeraerts and Cuyckens (2007), Littlemore and Taylor (2014), Dąbrowska and Divjak (2015), Dancygier (2017), or Wen and Taylor (2021), readers like Evans et al. (2007) or Geeraerts (2006), and shorter introductory texts like Winters and Nathan (2020). The very fact that I am identifying the approach by means of encompassing reference works and not by referring to a single dominant name is significant. Generative grammar is predominantly and perhaps overwhelmingly Chomskyan grammar, just like Systemic Functional Grammar is Hallidayan linguistics, but Cognitive Linguistics is not the linguistic approach developed by a single Big Name. Rather, like perhaps American structuralism or the Prague School, it is best characterized as a movement fed by the ideas of a number of inspirational figures. In the first generation of cognitive linguists, these would include people like Ronald Langacker, George Lakoff, Leonard Talmy, Gilles Fauconnier, with other key figures emerging in later generations. The recognition that Cognitive Linguistics is a collective enterprise (and perhaps a rather loose one at that) raises the question of what holds the framework together: There will surely be an affinity between the various ideas introduced by the central members, but how can that affinity be best described? A network of thinkers produces a network of analytical concepts and descriptive practices, but what are the cohesive forces within that network? In this chapter, I will develop the idea that context is a crucial factor not only for the internal cohesion of Cognitive Linguistics but also for the position of Cognitive Linguistics in the evolution of linguistics in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In particular, I will argue that Cognitive Linguistics is a recontextualizing framework par excellence, i.e., one that reintroduces the contextual embeddedness of language in linguistic theory formation and that in doing so it counterbalances the decontextualizing tendencies that are at work in formal grammar and formal semantics.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

7 Cognitive Linguistics and context

Three caveats will be useful before we proceed. First, emphasizing the importance of context for Cognitive Linguistics does not imply that it is the only contemporary or recent framework in linguistics in which context plays a central role. In particular, much of functional linguistics is about contextual factors and language as a social semiotic with a communicative function. However, a systematic comparison between functional and Cognitive Linguistics (as in Nuyts 2007) is beyond the scope of the present chapter. Second, as implied by the previous paragraph, I will try to do justice to Cognitive Linguistics as a diverse framework that brings together different, largely complementary approaches to language, without privileging any one in particular. Specifically, although some readers may tend to associate Cognitive Linguistics predominantly with the Lakoffian tradition of research into conceptual metaphors and embodied cognition, they should be aware that this line of investigation, however impressive, is but one strand within the larger texture of Cognitive Linguistics. Third, I have made the point about the recontextualizing nature of Cognitive Linguistics before (Geeraerts 2010, 2015), and some readers might remark that the following pages are basically a recombination of ideas that I expressed earlier. They would not be wrong, but even if the present text will repeat, to some extent literally, my earlier treatments of the issue, it will also offer a more analytical and systematic view of the recontextualizing core of Cognitive Linguistics.

7.2 Cognitive Linguistics in the History of Modern Linguistics To understand the specific position of Cognitive Linguistics in the history of modern linguistics, we may focus on two aspects of generative grammar: its changing view on the role of semantics, and its overall decontextualization of grammar as autonomous syntax.

7.2.1 Meaning in Generative Grammar As a first step, we should go back to the beginning of generative grammar, and to the changing position of semantics in the internal development of the theory. In the framework defined by Noam Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures (1957), meaning does not play a role in the conception of grammaticality (and a fortiori, in the grammar as the rule system governing that grammaticality). The iconic sentence Colorless green ideas sleep furiously is considered meaningless, but at the same time it is taken to be grammatical, because its syntactic structure corresponds entirely to a fully grammatical sentence like Bright young linguists talk endlessly. Meaningfulness, in other words, is not a criterion for grammaticality, but syntactic well-formedness is. In the model defined by Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, Chomsky (1965) switches position. The description of meaning is incorporated into grammar, and while Colorless green ideas sleep furiously is still considered to be meaningless, it acquires the

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

161

162

DIRK GEERAERTS

status of an ungrammatical sentence that needs to be excluded by the formal grammar: Ungrammaticality may be due to semantic ill-formedness. The incorporation of meaning and semantic well-formedness into the heart of the grammar did, however, create a problem with regard to the notion of “transformation,” which was at that point another crucial aspect of the formal framework of generative grammar. The algorithmic description of the grammatical structures of a language went in two steps. First, phrase structure rules produce an initial syntactic tree, the so-called “deep structure,” which may then, second, be transformed into a different type of tree, the “surface structure.” The question of whether transformations are meaning-preserving then became a hotly debated topic in generative theory, ultimately leading to a rift between two virulently opposed camps. On the one hand, if you believe that transformations are meaningpreserving, all the semantic information you need is already available in the deep structure, and the deep structure as such becomes equivalent to the semantic description of the sentence. Semantics accordingly takes precedence in the linguistic description; the first and basic step in the process of building syntactic structures is a semantic one. This was the position taken by the so-called Generative Semantics movement, which in works like McCawley (1968) developed its program by creating a hybrid and rather ill-fitting fusion of linguistic syntax with descriptive notions taken from formal logic. On the other hand, if you believe that transformations can change meaning, the primacy of syntax can be maintained: Semantic interpretation will be placed at the end of the process of building grammatical tree structures. This was the position that was ultimately favored by Chomsky, for reasons that can be easily understood in light of one of Chomsky’s basic targets for linguistic theorizing, namely, to explain the process of language acquisition. If, like Chomsky, you believe in a genetic endowment for language, then it is highly unlikely that that genetic module will involve something as ephemeral and diverse and variable as meaning. If there is an ingrained linguistic knowledge (and as is well known, Chomsky believes there has to be to explain language acquisition), it is more likely to involve the formal, structural aspects of the language, i.e., syntax. This is all the more so because syntax underlies that other main feature of language emphasized by Chomsky: the capacity of human beings to produce an infinite number of different sentences. Therefore, within the generative tradition, Generative Semantics lost out against so-called Interpretive Semantics, which then became the first of a series of successive models within generative grammar ultimately leading to the current notion of Universal Grammar. What all of these models (and a number of other theories of formal grammar) have in common is the idea of an autonomous syntax, that is, the notion that the syntax of the language is a module of the grammar that stands on its own and that can be described largely independently of considerations of meaning and function. Such a module will surely interact with semantics and pragmatics, but essentially works according to its own set of principles. But importantly from a historical point of view, the

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

7 Cognitive Linguistics and context

demise of Generative Semantics within the generative grammar tradition became an important stimulus for the development of semantics in two different traditions outside of generative grammar. First, some of the linguists who were active in the broad circle of Generative Semantics became founding figures of what we now know as Cognitive Linguistics. This applies to George Lakoff and Ronald Langacker, and to some extent also to Charles Fillmore, who was a major inspiration for Cognitive Linguistics but who never self-identified as a cognitive linguist. Second, the rapprochement with logical semantics which was rather clumsily executed by Generative Semantics motivated scholars with a background in logic, like Richard Montague (1974) and Barbara Partee (1976), to develop a formal kind of natural language semantics that was firmly and unambiguously rooted in logical semantics, and that became the basis for the very rich tradition of formal semantics as we currently know it. So overall, if we look at the role and position of meaning, we may distinguish three broad strands of thought in current linguistic theory: formal syntax, formal semantics, and cognitive semantics. The first two share the interest in a formal, symbolically representational approach to linguistic description that was introduced by generative grammar, and while the first approach minimizes the role of meaning, the last two frameworks endorse the primacy of semantics that was originally (but unsuccessfully) promoted within generative grammar by the Generative Semantics movement. Characteristically though, the logical inspiration of formal semantics leads to an entirely different type of meaning description from what is common in Cognitive Linguistics. Not only is formal semantics couched in the formal language of logic, but it focuses on the truth-functional compositionality of linguistic utterances. Given a strictly referential conception of meaning, it examines how the truth-functional properties of an entire proposition are compositionally derived from the properties of its components. Cognitive semantics, by contrast, does not restrict linguistic meaning to its referential and truth-functional aspects but starts from a broad conception of meaning in which imagery, affect, experience may all take pride of place, and in which rigid formalization becomes less of a desideratum. For instance, to come back to the sentence with which we started this section, Cognitive Linguistics will readily accept the possibility of a metaphorical reading of Colorless green ideas sleep furiously (in the sense, say, in which not very inspiring ecological ideas impatiently remain hidden and inactive) – a figurative interpretation that lies beyond the range of most types of formal semantics. So, as a first characterization of the theoretical position of Cognitive Linguistics, we can think of it historically as an approach in which, in the area of meaning description, demands of descriptive scope take precedence over the pursuit of formalizability.

7.2.2 Systemic Decontextualization We need to take a further step backwards to enrich the picture painted so far. Generative grammar separated grammar, reduced to autonomous syntax, from a thick conception of meaning, but it also separated it from other contextual

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

163

164

DIRK GEERAERTS

features. To see how this happened, we need to specify the relationship between generative grammar and structuralism. In its Saussurean form, structuralism emphasizes the distinction between language system (langue, a social phenomenon) and language use (parole, an individual, psychological phenomenon). By favoring langue over parole, and by thinking of langue as a homogeneous “system,” this distinction introduces an element of decontextualization: Whereas language use is by definition contextualized because it happens in a specific situation and environment, focusing on the linguistic system, by contrast, means abstracting away from these specific speech situations and looking for what is invariant at the level of the common system in contrast with the variability at the level of individual language use. But generative grammar takes decontextualization even further. The Saussurean framework makes a distinction between the system of language as a social phenomenon and language use as an individual phenomenon, but it doesn’t have much to say about the psychological bridge between system and use. To explain how language users can use the linguistic system to begin with, a third notion needs to be introduced that is as such absent from the Saussurean model, namely, the individual language user’s knowledge of the linguistic system. It is that knowledge that mediates between the individual activity of the language user and the existence of the linguistic system as a social phenomenon, and it is that knowledge, equally obviously, that is captured by Chomsky’s notion of “competence.” While Chomskyan “performance” and Saussurean parole are essentially the same (and in both cases, equally secondary in the hierarchy of things linguistic), Chomskyan competence fills the psychological gap that exists between langue as system and parole as activity: It introduces the individual’s knowledge of the language system as a crucial element of linguistic description. At the same time, however, Chomskyan generativism leaves a new gap by ignoring or neglecting the social nature of language. The lack of relevance (for his research program, that is) that Chomsky has generally attributed to the social aspects of language involves not just sociolinguistics and language-internal language variation, but more importantly also the social aspects of the process of language acquisition. If language is a social semiotic in the Saussurean sense, the acquisition of language is, at least to some extent, a process of cultural transmission: It is part of a socialization and acculturation process. Conversely, in the Chomskyan mindset, the acquisition of language is not primarily grounded in social interaction but based on man’s genetic endowment for language. Language acquisition in the Chomskyan view may require some input from the environment, but it is essentially a process of biological growth, not one of social integration. In this sense, there is a correlation between Chomsky’s limited attention for the social dimension of language and his genetic view of language acquisition. Let us summarize. Generative grammar, by defining grammar in terms of an autonomous, genetically entrenched universal syntax, dissociates what it considers to be the core discipline of linguistics from meaning, from the social

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

7 Cognitive Linguistics and context

function of language, from language usage. When Cognitive Linguistics emerged in the 1980s, it defined itself in contrast with the then dominant generative paradigm on two dimensions. First, against the minimization of semantics in generative grammar (and also against the reduction of meaning in formal semantics), it put a broad conception of meaning at the heart of linguistic description. And second, it reacted against the dissociation of grammar from social variation and actual usage. More precisely, we can describe Cognitive Linguistics as a systematic attempt to recontextualize linguistics on both relevant dimensions: It recontextualizes semantics, and it recontextualizes the grammar at large. In the following two sections, we will explore what this recontextualization implies by examining each of both dimensions in more detail. More precisely, I will argue that there are two main forms in which Cognitive Linguistics recontextualizes the linguistic conception of meaning, and then again, that there are two main forms in which it recontextualizes the linguistic conception of language. These two pairs of recontextualizing tendencies are not unrelated and describing the links between them will be the subject matter of a brief final section.

7.3 Recontextualizing Meaning To appreciate how Cognitive Linguistics recontextualizes meaning, we will first go over the most prominent models for meaning description suggested by Cognitive Linguistics, and then identify the two major ways in which these approaches embody a contextualized perspective on meaning.

7.3.1 Models of Meaning in Cognitive Linguistics The innovations brought to semantics by Cognitive Linguistics fall roughly into three groups. First, a number of important ideas put forward by cognitive semantics focus on the internal semantic structure of natural language expressions, i.e., the relationship between the various senses of the expressions. Thus, the “radial network” model (Lakoff 1987) describes a category structure in which a central case of the category radiates toward novel instances: Less central category uses are extended from the center. Brugman’s seminal study (1988) of over, for instance, takes the “above and across” reading of over (as in the plane flew over) as central, and then shows how less central readings extend from the central case. These can be concrete extensions, as in a “coverage” reading (the board is over the hole), but also metaphorical ones, as in temporal uses (over a period of time). Radial categories constitute but one type of a broader set of models that fall under the heading of “prototype theory” (Rosch 1978; Geeraerts 1989; Taylor 1989). In general, these look at the interaction between the extensional aspects of the category (specifically, the salience of category members) and their intensional aspects (the definitional demarcation between senses and the possibility of formulating a definition of

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

165

166

DIRK GEERAERTS

the category in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions). This interaction can take various forms, to the extent that it has been argued that the notion of “prototype” is itself a prototypically structured one, i.e., that there is no single definition that captures all and only the diverse forms of “prototypicality” that linguists have been talking about. Second, other branches of cognitive semantics concentrate on the conceptual mechanisms that realize the creation of new meanings, specifically, metaphor and metonymy. The notion of “conceptual metaphor” (introduced by George Lakoff’s and Mark Johnson’s book Metaphors We Live By of 1980) captures the recognition that a given metaphor need not be restricted to a single lexical item but may generalize over different expressions. Such general patterns may then be summarized in an overall statement like L O V E I S W A R , a pattern that ranges over expressions like He is known for his many rapid conquests, He fled from her advances, She is besieged by suitors. The attention for metaphor sparked off a number of related concepts. Image schemas (Johnson 1987; Hampe 2005) are regular patterns of sensory or motor experiences that recur as a source domain (or a structuring part of a source domain) for different target domains. Typical image schemas include containment, path, scales, verticality, and center-periphery. If metaphor is analyzed as a mapping from one domain to another, the question arises as to how such mappings take place: How does the structure of the source domain get mapped onto the target domain? The notion of “conceptual integration” (aka blending) developed by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner (Fauconnier 1985; Fauconnier and Turner 2002) provides a descriptive framework to answer that question; it describes the derived reading as a merger of the source space and the target space. Although this “mental spaces” approach clearly links up with the analysis of metaphor as mapping across domains, the conceptual integration framework is more general, in the sense that it can be applied to a variety of phenomena, many of which (like counterfactuals) are not related to metaphor. Although less dominant than conceptual metaphor and its offshoots, metonymy research (Kövecses and Radden 1998; Barcelona 2000; Dirven and Pörings 2002) also received an important impetus in cognitive semantics, more specifically from the suggestion that metonymy could receive a definition that mirrors that of metaphor: If metaphor is seen as a mapping from one domain to the other, metonymy can be seen as a mapping within a single domain or a domain matrix. This suggestion is not without issues (the relevant definition of “domain” is not self-evident), but regardless, the cognitive linguistic study of metonymy is thriving. A third group of models examines the mechanisms of grammatical construal in languages: How do the grammatical resources of a language contribute to the conceptualization of reality? This approach, epitomized by the work of Ron Langacker (1987, 1991) and Len Talmy (2000), analyzes the semantic import of syntactic, morphological, constructional mechanisms. Thus, for instance, Langacker suggests a semantic definition of word classes. On conceptual grounds, he distinguishes between a number of basic classes of

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

7 Cognitive Linguistics and context

predications: entities and things versus relations, and within the relational predicates, stative relations, complex atemporal relations, and processes. The formal word classes of a language, he then argues, typically express a basic type of predication. For instance, while nouns express the notion of “thing” (a bounded entity in some domain), adjectives will typically be stative relational predicates, and verbs processes. Langacker’s grammatical model is a systematic exploration of such dimensions of construal, which further include, among others, perspective (described in terms of figure/ground alignment) and prominence (described in terms of base/profile configurations). Similarly, Talmy describes various conceptual subsystems underlying grammatical constructs, like force dynamics and causation, attention phenomena, plexity, event structures and their lexicalization. Importantly, construal does not just involve the semantics of separate forms of expression but crucially presupposes the presence of alternatives, of different ways of portraying reality. Accordingly, studies of grammatical construal tend to look at the systems lying behind functionally equivalent or near-equivalent alternatives. In Talmy’s work on lexicalization patterns of motion events, for instance, the variation shows up typologically: “Verb-framed” languages encode the path of motion into the verb, whereas “satellite-framed” languages encode it in a particle, a prepositional phrase, or similar. But the alternatives can obviously also exist within a single language. Frame semantics (Fillmore 1977, 1985) is an influential model describing intralinguistic alternative argument structure choices. One essential starting point is the idea that one cannot understand the meaning of a word (or a linguistic expression in general) without access to all the encyclopedic knowledge that relates to that expression. For example, in order to understand the word sell, you need to have world knowledge about the situation of commercial transfer. This comprises, besides the act of selling, a person who sells, a person who buys, goods to be sold, money or another form of payment, and so on. A semantic frame of this type is a coherent structure of related concepts where the relations have to do with the way the concepts co-occur in real-world situations. Specific patterns of expressions evoke the frame and highlight individual concepts within the frame. In the standard commercial transaction example, for instance, sell construes the situation from the perspective of the seller and buy from the perspective of the buyer.

7.3.2 Experiential Grounding and Contextual Dialectics Given this overview of various types of cognitive semantics, let us now identify the two characteristics that allow us to say that cognitive semantics is indeed a recontextualizing way of looking at linguistic meaning. In the first place, the approaches mentioned above embody different ways in which linguistic meaning is grounded in experience. The meanings expressed by linguistic forms do not exist in a vacuum, but in various ways they reflect and express the experience of the language user. We may discern two basic ways in which this is the case.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

167

168

DIRK GEERAERTS

First, language users are embodied beings, not pure minds. Our organic, physiological, anatomic nature influences our experience of the world, and this experience is reflected in the language we use. Image schemas are a clear case in point: They embody patterns of spatial, and more broadly sensorimotor interaction with the world. Verticality, for instance, corresponds with the posture of the human body, and a containment schema draws on experiences of visibility and haptic accessibility. In addition, there is a link with cognitive development. Grady (1997) argues for a distinction between sensory and non-sensory schemas, with image schemas restricted to fundamental units of sensory perception. He further distinguishes a class of primary metaphors that essentially map basic sensory schemas onto non-sensory ones, as in M O R E I S U P , where height functions as a source domain for quantity: “more” can be seen as “up” because in both cases, gradation plays a crucial role. Primary metaphors are based on correlations experienced in childhood: The child building a tower with blocks learns by experience that more blocks build a higher tower. The bodily experiential nature of language is not restricted to image schemas and preconceptual experience. It extends to the idea that conceptual construal in language may rely on cognitive capacities and processes that are not of a specifically linguistic kind. This is the case, for instance, with Langacker’s analysis of perspective, or with Talmy’s attentional subsystem. As an illustration, consider spatial perspectives in linguistic expressions, and how they can construe the same objective situation linguistically in different ways. Standing in the back garden and describing the position of a bicycle, someone could say either It’s behind the house or It’s in front of the house. These would seem to be contradictory statements, except that they embody different perspectives. In the first expression, the perspective is determined by the way the speaker looks: The object that is situated in the direction of the gaze is in front of the speaker, but if there is an obstacle along that direction, the thing is behind that obstacle. In this case, looking in the direction of the bicycle from the back garden, the house blocks the view, and so the bike is behind the house. In the second expression, however, the point of view is that of the house: A house has a canonical direction, with a front that is similar to the face of a person. The way a house is facing, then, is determined by its front, and the second expression takes the point of view of the house rather than the speaker, as if the house were a person looking in a certain direction. Seeing things in this way is not a primarily or typically linguistic skill, but approaches like Langacker’s and Talmy’s show how it shapes specific grammatical resources of the language. But second, we are not just biological entities: We also have a cultural and social identity, and our language may reveal that identity, i.e., languages may embody the historical and cultural experience of groups of speakers (and individuals). Think of birds (as a typically prototypical category). The encyclopedic nature of language implies that we have to take into account the actual familiarity that people have with birds: It is not just the general definition of

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

7 Cognitive Linguistics and context

“bird” that counts, but also what we know about sparrows and penguins and ostriches, etc. But these experiences will differ from culture to culture: The typical, most familiar birds in one culture will be different from those in another, and that will affect the knowledge people associate with a category like “bird.” Linguistic categories, then, may express cultural models, i.e., the more or less coherent sets of concepts that cultures use to structure experience and make sense of the world. These are not reinvented afresh with every new period in the culture’s development. Rather, it is by definition part of their cultural nature that they have a historical dimension. It is only by investigating their historical origins and their gradual transformation that their contemporary form can be properly understood. In recent years, the importance of culture for metaphor research, for instance, has received an increasing recognition, also among the major spokesmen of Conceptual Metaphor Theory: see Kövecses (2005). A second form of contextualization is slightly more abstract than the experiential grounding of meaning: Next to its experiential grounding, linguistic meaning has an interactive relationship with regard to its contexts of usage. Language is used for talking about certain things, situations, events, actions. In the simplest case, a concept like “bird” refers to a specific animal in a given situation, and then to another in another situation, or perhaps to all members of the class “bird” as a whole. The specifics of these usage situations are part of the context of language use, and Cognitive Linguistics explores how linguistic meaning takes into account that context, and more specifically, it takes that context as interacting with the linguistic meaning applied to it. The latter specification is necessary, because no theory of meaning would simply deny the existence of that situational context. A simple view of semantics merely holds that meanings are applied to contexts, while a more sophisticated view analyzes the interaction of meanings and contexts. That interaction goes in two directions, in fact, and both directions are conspicuously ingrained in the models for meaning description developed within Cognitive Linguistics. On the one hand, linguistic meaning is dynamic and flexible. Meanings change, and there is a good reason for that: meaning has to do with shaping our world, but we have to deal with a changing world. New experiences and changes in the environment require that people adapt their semantic categories to transformations of the circumstances and that we leave room for nuances and slightly deviant cases. For a theory of language, this means that we cannot just think of language as a more or less rigid and stable structure: If meaning is the hallmark of linguistic structure, then we should think of those structures as flexible. Again, this is firmly embodied in the approaches that we presented: A radial structure of senses (whether it is built up through prototypicality, metaphor, metonymy or other mechanisms) is precisely the outcome of a flexible usage of existing concepts. Importantly, this involves not just the development of new senses but also the modulation of existing ones. When applying the concept “bird” to ostriches, for instance, another set of

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

169

170

DIRK GEERAERTS

characteristics is activated than when you talk about sparrows, if only because ostriches do not fly. But we would not say that the word bird has two different meanings, one that includes sparrows and another that includes ostriches. On the other hand, linguistic meaning is perspectival. Meaning, according to cognitive semantics, is not just an objective reflection of the outside world, it is a way of shaping that world, it is a form of conceptual construal, and the various types of conceptual construal underlie the diverse descriptive models that are developed in cognitive semantics. Metaphor, metonymy, mental spaces, grammatical mechanisms in a Langackerian or Talmyan vein, alternatives within a frame: These are all ways of looking at one thing in terms of another and construing a perspective on reality. To come back to the bird example, classifying an ostrich as a bird means tweaking the common concept of “bird” a little bit, but at the same time, it is also a way of looking at the ostrich from the point of view of what you already know about birds. In this way, we can say that there is an interactive, dialectic relationship between concept and context: The concept provides a perspective from which to conceptualize the context, but there is a feedback loop from the context to the concept.

7.4 Recontextualizing Grammar In the previous section, we saw not only how Cognitive Linguistics places semantics at the heart of linguistic description, but how it specifically develops a contextualized conception of meaning. The basic impulse of Cognitive Linguistics is to put the description of meaning in a central position in linguistics, but just as importantly, that meaning is not studied as something isolated but rather as something that is embedded in a wider context – and that context takes different forms: the body, society and culture, and actual language use. In this section, we will see how that recontextualizing tendency also applies to the way in which Cognitive Linguistics looks at linguistic systems at large. As in the previous section, there are two relevant features to pay attention to, and they are in fact related to the features discussed there. First, similar to the interactive relationship between concepts and their contexts of usage, we will describe how usage-based linguistics generalizes that idea to language at large. Second, similar to the experiential grounding of meaning, we will introduce the intersubjective grounding of linguistic systems as the basis for a “social turn” in Cognitive Linguistics.

7.4.1 Usage-based Linguistics Prototypicality, as we have seen, illustrates the interactive relationship between concepts and contexts. However, it not only plays a role with regard to the description of meaning as such but also has an influence on the way in which linguistic categories in the broader sense are described: If grammatical

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

7 Cognitive Linguistics and context

categories are conceptual entities (and that is one of the main perspectives driving Cognitive Linguistics), then the characteristics of categorization unearthed by prototype theory should also play a role in the description of grammatical categories and linguistic systems at large. This can be specified with regard to both the nature of grammatical descriptions and the nature of the linguistic system as a whole. In the first case, we look at the characteristics of the categories that are needed in a grammatical description. Two features of current thinking about grammatical categories link up with prototype theory: the inclusion of an extensional level of description, and the acceptation of fuzziness. (For a richly illustrated introduction to prototype effects in grammar, see Taylor 2015.) The first feature relates to the fact that prototype theory has made it clear that it is necessary not only to look at the definition of a category, but also to have a look at the members of that category, and the exemplars instantiating it. The information that we have about a category like “fruit” may not only be enshrined in an abstract definition, but it may also be carried by the knowledge and experience that we have of actual, specific types of fruit. If you apply that to syntactic categories and grammatical rules, you will need to have a look at the way in which those entities are realized by actual words and word groups. An adequate description of a category like “passive” cannot stop short at an abstract characterization of passivization but needs to have a look at typical passive constructions, just in the way in which the description of a category like “fruit” needs to take into account both typical and atypical types of fruit. Langacker (1987) has referred to this recognition as a rejection of the “rule/ list fallacy.” A traditional approach would have it that when you can describe something as a grammatical rule it is no longer necessary to look at the list of elements that instantiate the rule. But from a prototype-theoretical perspective, that is an error: An adequate description of a category requires looking at the intensional level (the abstract level of definitions) as well as the extensional level (the level of the actual elements filling in a category). As a consequence, a second feature of prototypicality emerges: The categories of grammatical description may be fuzzy at the edges, and there will be clines of applicability of categories to the entities that instantiate them (as when some passive constructions are more typical than others, and the possibility of passivization may in some cases be in doubt). On a higher level, the distinction between grammar and lexicon itself stops being categorical. This is most conspicuous in construction grammar (Hoffmann and Trousdale 2013), in the sense that the notion of “construction” covers fully lexicalized idioms as well as syntagms consisting of abstract entities like word classes, and hybrid entities that combine open slots with fully or partially specified lexical classes. The prototype-theoretical effect of breaking down categorical barriers also applies to the distinction between the linguistic system and the usage of that system. That distinction has dominated twentieth-century linguistics both in the structuralist, Saussurean form of the distinction between langue and parole, and in the generative form of the distinction between “competence”

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

171

172

DIRK GEERAERTS

and “performance.” From a prototype-theoretical point of view, this is again an example of the distinction between an intensional level and an extensional level, that is to say, if you think of a linguistic system as a category, then that category is instantiated by the communicative events making use of that system. Accordingly, a good understanding of the system (the overarching category, the language) requires taking into account the actual usage events realizing the system. It is, for instance, only by looking at actual usage events that changes in the linguistic system can be explained. Systemic changes occur when marginal or new ways of speaking become more and more frequent, and this points to another feature of prototypicality: salience effects and entrenchment, as reflected by differences of frequency. In the course of the first two decades of the twenty-first century, this dynamic, dialectic relationship between linguistic system and linguistic usage has become more and more prominent within Cognitive Linguistics (see among many other references, Langacker 2000 and Bybee 2010 for foundational statements, and Diessel 2019 and Divjak 2019 for forceful recent texts). One might even say that we are currently witnessing a trend toward usagebased linguistics that is broader than Cognitive Linguistics, in the sense that an interest in the frequency-based, probabilistic description of corpus data and experimental results takes precedence over the semantic interests of Cognitive Linguistics as it originally emerged. That shift toward usage-based linguistics is to some extent the result of a technological pull exerted by the increasing availability of corpus data embodying spontaneous language use, and computational tools for dealing with such large amounts of data. But at the same time, it is the result of a theoretical push in which the prototype-theoretical insistence on the importance of an extensional level of description – of looking not just at the abstract characterization of concepts but also at the exemplars that they apply to – plays a major role. The current emergence of usage-based linguistics is the ultimate consequence of a process that began half a century ago, when the incorporation of prototype theory into lexical semantics and nascent Cognitive Linguistics constituted a first step toward breaking down the theoretical barrier between meaning and world knowledge, langue and parole, system and usage.

7.4.2 Intersubjectivity and Sociocultural Variation Cognitive Linguistics in the new millennium is characterized by a growing attention to the social and cultural aspects of language on three levels of analysis. The first level considers variation within languages: To what extent do the phenomena that are typically focused on in Cognitive Linguistics exhibit variation within the same linguistic community? The research conducted within this approach links up with the research traditions of sociolinguistics, dialectology, and stylistic analysis, using the same meticulous empirical methods as these traditions. Focusing on language-internal variation in all its dimensions, this research field may be illustrated by several

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

7 Cognitive Linguistics and context

publications referring to “Cognitive Sociolinguistics” or “social cognitive linguistics” as the study of lectal variation in the context of Cognitive Linguistics: Kristiansen and Dirven (2008), Croft (2009), Geeraerts et al. (2010), Pütz et al. (2012), and Kristiansen and Geeraerts (2013). Cognitive Sociolinguistics, in the way demarcated by these publications, strives toward a convergence of the usage-based traditions of language studies, as represented by pragmatics and sociolinguistics, and the post-generative theories of grammar illustrated by Cognitive Linguistics. Variationist studies of this kind involve issues such as the social distribution of prototype-based meaning extensions (Robinson 2010), the lectal productivity of metonymical patterns (Zhang et al. 2015), the variable use of metaphor in discourse (Semino 2008), lexical variation in pluricentric languages (Soares da Silva 2014), usage-based approaches to borrowing (Zenner et al. 2012), spatial semantics at dialect level (Berthele 2006), and lectal variation of constructions and constructional semantics (Colleman 2010, among many others). The next level is that of variation among languages and cultures, taking the form of cultural and anthropological comparisons, or of historical investigations into changing conceptualizations across time periods. An interest in cultural effects at the level of interlinguistic variation existed from an early date in the history of Cognitive Linguistics. For instance, Rosch’s (1978) research on prototype categorization, which had a major influence on theory formation in Cognitive Linguistics, is characterized by an anthropological background, just like Berlin’s research on color terms and ethnobiological classification from which it derived (Berlin and Kay 1969). Questions of cultural relativity play a natural role in this kind of investigation, together with the notion of “cultural model”: see Holland and Quinn (1987) for an influential early volume. Cross-cultural studies of metaphorical patterns and conceptual metaphors are by now an established line of research: see Kövecses (2020). A broadly anthropological view on cultural linguistics has been developed by, among others, Palmer (1996) and Sharifian (2017). The third level, beyond intralinguistic and interlinguistic variation, is that of language as such: Here we can situate foundational studies that emphasize and analyze the way in which the emergence of language as such and the presence of specific features in a language can only be adequately understood if one takes into account the socially interactive nature of linguistic communication. Representatives of this strand of research include Croft (2009) on a socioevolutionary view of language, Sinha (2009) on language as an epigenetic system, Zlatev (2008) on situated embodiment, Itkonen (2003) on the social nature of the linguistic system, Verhagen (2005) on the central role of intersubjectivity in language, Harder (2010) on the socio-functional background of language, Schmid (2020) on the interplay of psychological and social entrenchment of linguistic patterns, and in the wake of Tommasello (2003), the rich literature on socio-communicative, usage-based theories of language acquisition. Regardless of their differences, these approaches share a foundational

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

173

174

DIRK GEERAERTS

perspective: They present high-level models of the principled role of social factors and intersubjective phenomena in language and linguistic evolution. Taken together, these three areas of research constitute a “social turn” in Cognitive Linguistics that completes the recontextualization tendencies. The social aspects of language that were relegated to the periphery by approaches that consider “autonomous syntax” to be the core of the language are now seen as naturally and inescapably intertwined with grammatical description. Also, this social turn is obviously related to the other forms of recontextualization mentioned in previous sections. An interest in the experiential grounding of meaning easily translates into an interest in interlinguistic variation: To what extent do different cultures express a different construal of the world in their language use? And a usage-based model almost inevitably yields a concern with intralinguistic variation. When we say that common linguistic behavior derives from the interaction between language users, it needs to be established just how common that behavior actually is, and how the existing variation is structured by social factors – precisely the kind of questions that are central to dialectology and sociolinguistics: “usage-based implies variational” (Geeraerts 2005, 2016). In the context of the history of linguistics, the third, theoretically inclined line of research mentioned above is particularly telling: It invests the socio-communicative and intersubjective features of language with a foundational importance, or in other words, the social turn in Cognitive Linguistics is a return to a Saussurean conception of language as a social semiotic (though, given the acceptance of usage-based variation, without the mainstream structuralist assumption of the internal homogeneity of language systems).

7.5 Conclusion Let’s wrap up. We have positioned Cognitive Linguistics against the background of twentieth-century developments in linguistics and described how Cognitive Linguistics constitutes a recontextualization of linguistics in contrast with formal semantics and formal grammar. In contrast with the former, Cognitive Linguistics works with a model of meaning that emphasizes the experiential grounding of meaning and the dialectic interaction of senses and context of use. In contrast with the latter, Cognitive Linguistics develops a usage-based model of linguistics and reintroduces the social dimension as an inherent dimension of language, and social variation as an inherent part of grammar. Both pairs of recontextualizing trends are related, as can be readily appreciated if we interpret them against the background of the semiotic triangle as classically described by Ogden and Richards (1923). The semiotic triangle relates the linguistic sign, on the one hand, to its reference, and on the other, to the language user. These two poles may precisely provide a link between the two pairs of recontextualizations, if we double the triangle by not only applying it in its original form to individual signs, but by also applying it to

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

7 Cognitive Linguistics and context

Table 7.1 Fundamental recontextualizing characteristics of Cognitive Linguistics contextualizing meaning

contextualizing grammar

relating to the user pole experiential grounding of intersubjective and social of the semiotic triangle meaning grounding of language relating to the reference pole dialectic relationship between dialectic relationship between of the semiotic triangle concept and context system and usage

language at large. In the latter case, we consider how the linguistic system (the large-scale equivalent of the individual sign in the basic Ogden and Richards conception) relates to users and groups of users, and then to its instantiation as usage events. “Instantiation” is the crucial notion here: Just like the referents or exemplars of a single sign instantiate the associated category, a linguistic system is extensionally represented by all the occasions on which, and all the specific forms in which, it is put into practice. If we accept this doubling of the semiotic triangle (corresponding, needless to say, with the distinction between Sections 7.3 and 7.4 in the pages above), we can define the essential similarity between the two forms of contextualization that we identified within each of the two perspectives. First, both the experiential grounding of meaning and the intrinsically social, intersubjective nature of language involves the user: users sharing common physiological and anatomical embodiment; users with their individual experiences and background; users as part of intersubjective and communicative communities. Second, a dialectic relation between language and its instantiation in a specific situational context exists both for individual linguistic categories and for language as a whole. The resulting picture of the fundamental recontextualizing characteristics of Cognitive Linguistics in their mutual relations can be summarized in Table 7.1. It appears that (re)contextualization indeed provides a unifying perspective on the contribution of Cognitive Linguistics to the development of linguistic theory in the late twentieth and the early twenty-first century. But to round off, it should be remarked that this unifying perspective should not be taken to imply a complete homogeneity of Cognitive Linguistics. The systematic and pervasive relevance of recontextualization within Cognitive Linguistics should not obscure the fact that tensions may exist within the framework: Even if recontextualization is a defining overarching characteristic of Cognitive Linguistics, various forms of recontextualization do not necessarily point in the same direction. Specifically, an experiential grounding of meaning as embodiment has a universalist tendency (assuming that the human body is the same for everybody), while a sociocultural conception of language will tend to emphasize the diversity and historicity of the human experience. If it is correct to characterize Cognitive Linguistics in terms of recontextualization, determining the proper relationship between what is universal and what is historical and specific may well be a major focus for the further evolution of the framework.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

175

176

DIRK GEERAERTS

References Barcelona, A., ed. (2000). Metaphor and Metonymy at the Crossroads: A Cognitive Perspective. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Berlin, B., and Kay, P. (1969). Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution. Berkeley: University of California Press. Berthele, R. (2006). Ort und Weg: Die sprachliche Raumreferenz in Varietäten des Deutschen, Rätoromanischen und Französischen. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Brugman, C. (1988). The Story of “Over”: Polysemy, Semantics and the Structure of the Lexicon. New York: Garland. Bybee, J. (2010). Language, Usage and Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chomsky, N. (1957). Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton. Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Colleman, T. (2010). Lectal variation in constructional semantics: “Benefactive” ditransitives in Dutch. In D. Geeraerts, G. Kristiansen, and Y. Peirsman (eds.), Advances in Cognitive Sociolinguistics (pp. 191–221). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Croft, W. (2009). Towards a social cognitive linguistics. In V. Evans and S. Pourcel (eds.), New Directions in Cognitive Linguistics (pp. 395–420). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Dąbrowska, E., and Divjak, D., eds. (2015). Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Dancygier, B., ed. (2017). The Cambridge Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Diessel, H.. (2019). The Grammar Network: How Linguistic Structure Is Shaped by Language Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Divjak, D. (2019). Frequency in Language: Memory, Attention and Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dirven, R., and Pörings, R., eds. (2002). Metaphor and Metonymy in Comparison and Contrast. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Evans, V., and Green, M. (2006). Cognitive Linguistics: An Introduction. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Evans, V., Bergen, B., and Zinken, J., eds. (2007). The Cognitive Linguistics Reader. London: Equinox. Fauconnier, G. (1985). Mental Spaces: Aspects of Meaning Construction in Natural Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Fauconnier, G., and Turner, M. (2002). The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities. New York: Basic Books. Fillmore, C. J. (1977). Scenes-and-frames semantics. In A. Zampolli (ed.), Linguistic Structures Processing (pp. 55–81). Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing. Fillmore, C. J. (1985). Frames and the semantics of understanding. Quaderni di Semantica, 6, 222–254. Geeraerts, D. (1989). Prospects and problems of prototype theory. Linguistics, 27, 587–612. Geeraerts, D. (2005). Lectal variation and empirical data in Cognitive Linguistics. In F. Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez and S. Peña Cervel (eds.), Cognitive Linguistics: Internal Dynamics and Interdisciplinary Interactions (pp. 163–189). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

7 Cognitive Linguistics and context

Geeraerts, D., ed. (2006). Cognitive Linguistics: Basic Readings. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Geeraerts, D., and Cuyckens, H., eds. (2007). The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press. Geeraerts, D. (2010). Recontextualizing grammar: Underlying trends in thirty years of Cognitive Linguistics. In E. Tabakowska, M. Choinski, and L. Wiraszka (eds.), Cognitive Linguistics in Action: From Theory to Application and Back (pp. 71–102). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Geeraerts, D. (2015). From structure to context: Modern linguistics from a distance. Μελέτες για την Ελληνική Γλώσσα. Studies in Greek Linguistics, 35, 35–51. Geeraerts, D. (2016). The sociosemiotic commitment. Cognitive Linguistics, 27, 527–542. Geeraerts, D., Kristiansen, G., and Peirsman, Y., eds. (2010). Advances in Cognitive Sociolinguistics. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Grady, J. (1997). “Theories are buildings” revisited. Cognitive Linguistics, 8, 267–290. Hampe, B., ed. (2005). From Perception to Meaning: Image Schemas in Cognitive Linguistics. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Harder, P. (2010). Meaning in Mind and Society: A Functional Contribution to the Social Turn in Cognitive Linguistics. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter Mouton. Hoffmann, T., and Trousdale, G., eds. (2013). The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar. New York: Oxford University Press. Holland, D., and Quinn, N., eds. (1987). Cultural Models in Language and Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Itkonen, E. (2003). What Is Language? A Study in the Philosophy of Linguistics. Turku: Åbo Akademis tryckeri. Johnson, M. (1987). The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kövecses, Z., and Radden, G. (1998). Metonymy: Developing a cognitive linguistic view. Cognitive Linguistics, 9, 37–77. Kövecses, Z. (2005). Metaphor in Culture: Universality and Variation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kövecses, Z. (2020). An extended view of conceptual metaphor theory. Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 18, 112–130. Kristiansen, G., and Dirven, R., eds. (2008). Cognitive Sociolinguistics: Language Variation, Cultural Models, Social Systems. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Kristiansen, G., and Geeraerts, D., eds. (2013). Contexts of Use in Cognitive Sociolinguistics (Thematic issue of Journal of Pragmatics). Amsterdam: Elsevier. Lakoff, G., and Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, G. (1987). Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Langacker, R. W. (1987). Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, Vol. I: Theoretical Prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Langacker, R. W. (1991). Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, Vol. II: Descriptive Application. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Langacker, R. W. (2000). A dynamic usage-based model. In M. Barlow and S. Kemmer (eds.), Usage-based Models of Language (pp. 1–63). Stanford: CSLI Publications. Littlemore, J., and Taylor, J. R., eds. (2014). The Bloomsbury Companion to Cognitive Linguistics. London: Bloomsbury.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

177

178

DIRK GEERAERTS

McCawley, J. D. (1968). Lexical insertion in a transformational grammar without deep structure. In B. J. Darden, C.-J. Bailey, and A. Davidson (eds.), Fourth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society (pp. 71–80). Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. Montague, R. (1974). Formal Philosophy: Selected Papers of Richard Montague. New Haven: Yale University Press. Nuyts, J. (2007). Cognitive linguistics and functional linguistics. In Dirk Geeraerts and Hubert Cuyckens (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics (pp. 543–565). New York: Oxford University Press. Ogden, C. K., and Richards, I. A. (1923). The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Palmer, G. B. (1996). Toward a Theory of Cultural Linguistics. Austin: University of Texas Press. Partee, B. H., ed. (1976). Montague Grammar. New York: Academic Press. Pütz, M., Robinson, J. A., and Reif, M., eds. (2012). Cognitive Sociolinguistics: Social and Cultural Variation in Cognition and Language Use. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Robinson, J. A. (2010). Awesome insights into semantic variation. In D. Geeraerts, G. Kristiansen, and Y. Peirsman (eds.), Advances in Cognitive Sociolinguistics (pp. 85–110). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Rosch, E. 1978. Principles of categorization. In E. Rosch and B. B. Lloyd (eds.), Cognition and Categorization (pp. 27–48). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Semino, E. (2008). Metaphor in Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schmid, H.-J. (2020). The Dynamics of the Linguistic System: Usage, Conventionalization, and Entrenchment. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sharifian, F. (2017). Cultural Linguistics: Cultural Conceptualisations and Language. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Sinha, C. (2009). Language as a biocultural niche and social institution. In V. Evans and S. Pourcel (eds.), New Directions in Cognitive Linguistics (pp. 289–309). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Soares da Silva, A. (2014). The pluricentricity of Portuguese: A sociolectometrical approach to divergence between European and Brazilian Portuguese. In A. Soares da Silva (ed.), Pluricentricity: Language Variation and Sociocognitive Dimensions (pp. 143–188). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Talmy, L. (2000). Toward a Cognitive Semantics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Taylor, J. R. (1989). Linguistic Categorization. Prototypes in Linguistic Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Taylor, J. R. (2015). Prototype effects in grammar. In E. Dąbrowska and D. Divjak (eds.), Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics (pp. 562–579). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a Language: A Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Verhagen, A. (2005). Constructions of Intersubjectivity: Discourse, Syntax, and Cognition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wen, X., and Taylor, J. R. eds. (2021). The Routledge Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics. New York/London: Routledge. Winters, M. E., and Nathan, G. S. (2020). Cognitive Linguistics for Linguists. New York: Springer.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

7 Cognitive Linguistics and context

Zenner, E., Speelman, D., and Geeraerts, D. (2012). Cognitive Sociolinguistics meets loanword research: Measuring variation in the success of anglicisms in Dutch. Cognitive Linguistics, 23, 749–792. Zlatev, J. (2008). The co-evolution of intersubjectivity and bodily mimesis. In J. Zlatev, T. Racine, C. Sinha, and E. Itkonen (eds.), The Shared Mind: Perspectives on Intersubjectivity (pp. 215–244). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Zhang, W., Geeraerts, D., and Speelman, D. (2015). Visualizing onomasiological change: Diachronic variation in metonymic patterns for “woman” in Chinese. Cognitive Linguistics, 26: 289–330.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

179

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Part III

Pragmatic Approaches to Context

Published online by Cambridge University Press

Published online by Cambridge University Press

8 The Role of Context in Gricean and Neo-Gricean Pragmatics Jacques Moeschler

8.1 Introduction It is generally assumed that pragmatics is “the study of language use, as opposed to language structure. . . . In a more focused sense . . . pragmatics contrasts with semantics, the study of linguistic meaning, and is the study of how contextual factors interact with linguistic meaning in the interpretation of utterances” (Wilson and Sperber 2012: 1). According to this presentation of pragmatics, it is obvious both that pragmatic meaning is outside the scope of linguistic meaning and that it is largely contextual; that is, it is determined in accordance with contextual factors. This vision of pragmatics is consistent with recent developments in pragmatics such as Relevance Theory (see Chapter 11 on Relevance Theory and context), but is not particularly compatible with early developments in pragmatics, which were influenced by the philosophy of language (see Chapter 4): Speech act theory, as initiated by John Austin in the 1950s and John Searle in the 1970s (see respectively Austin 1962; Searle 1969, 1979), is more a semantic, or conventional, theory of meaning; in a similar way, Grice’s theory of nonnatural meaning (Grice 1989), developed in his theory of conversational implicature (Grice 1975), hardly addresses context (see Section 8.3). The above-mentioned background shows up a historical paradox: Whereas pragmatics has become a trend in research on context, as shown by recent experimental developments (see Noveck and Sperber 2004; Noveck and Reboul 2008; Noveck 2018), its early advances were primarily noncontextual. This paradox must be explained, or at least called into question. The first aim of this chapter is to explain how and why the substantial developments in pragmatics launched in Grice’s article “Logic and Conversation” were noncontextual. I will also show how the Gricean conversational machinery (Section 8.3) is anticontextualist (Recanati 1994), and how the neo-Gricean paradigm, chiefly developed by Gazdar (1979), Horn (1984, 1989), and Levinson (2000), has given

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.009 Published online by Cambridge University Press

184

JACQUES MOESCHLER

context a double-check function which verifies whether implicatures are compatible with the common ground (Sections 8.5 and 8.6). The grammatical approach to implicature, mainly represented by Fox (2007) and Chierchia (2013), has on the other hand developed a complex reasoning process for deriving scalar implicatures, the type of generalized conversational implicature that is most often studied (Section 8.7). However, before introducing the starting point of all the research that has been done on conversational implicatures, and for which context is the crucial issue, I must focus on two additional topics. Firstly, Grice’s theory of conversational implicature is mainly addressed in the literature as a complement to utterance meaning as opposed to “what is said”; that is, the content or proposition expressed by an utterance. The issue at stake is what “what is said” consists of. It will be argued that most philosophical approaches (Kaplan 1989; Stalnaker 1978; Korta and Perry 2012) give a contextual flavor to “what is said” (Section 8.2). This paradox will be extended by introducing a strongly disputed concept, conventional implicature (Section 8.4). This concept was introduced by Grice in his definition of implicatures and of the criteria that distinguish between different types of implicatures (Sadock 1978). Although conventional implicatures are semantically encoded within the linguistic meaning of words or expressions, they are contextually constrained in their usages by their relationship to the common ground, or the set of propositions supposedly shared by the participants in a conversation (Karttunen and Peters 1979). The general conclusion of this chapter will be surprising, and certainly controversial: Whereas literal meaning, or “what is said,” is strongly contextually constrained – context is defined by Kaplan as the sequence of an agent, a time, and a world – implicatures, or pragmatically inferred nonliteral meanings reached through maxims of conversation and general principles, are also contextual. This conclusion could be the starting point of a very important debate in pragmatics on the role of contextual factors in the comprehension process. These factors impact not only linguistic and pragmatic competence development, and second-language learning, but also clinical linguistics, artificial intelligence, and social media, which are all research fields developed in this handbook.

8.2 Context in Content It is a common-sense assumption that the propositional content of a sentence, that is, its linguistic meaning, is not computed throughout contextual information, but simply as a result of compositional rules that are described by semantics. However, several arguments can be raised against this anticontextualist vision of “what is said.” The first argument was clearly stated by Searle (1979: 117): For him, “the notion of literal meaning of a sentence only has application relative to a set of contextual or background assumptions.” For

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.009 Published online by Cambridge University Press

8 Context in Gricean and Neo-Gricean Pragmatics

instance, Searle contrasts the truth-conditions of a sentence like (1) when uttered in ordinary earthly conditions where gravity is at work, with situations in which gravity is not present, for example, in a space station. In the latter case, the sentence would describe a situation in which the cat is only touching the edge of the mat without sitting on its entire surface: (1) The cat is on the mat.

The second argument against the noncontextual vision of “what is said” is given by all types of classic semantic formal language:. A sentence like (2) is certainly not true of all times and all locations: it is a contingent proposition which receives a truth-value for a determinate time and a specific location. (2) It is raining.

For instance, if I utter (3), after returning home, I certainly do not wish to say that at every moment and on every part of the motorway from Geneva to Mâcon it is true that it was snowing: (3) It was snowing on the motorway.

What I am suggesting is that there is a set of pairs of times and places for which the proposition it is snowing is true. For example, if I left the university parking lot at 4:00 p.m., it might be possible that it snowed at kilometer 60 at 4:30 p.m., but not at 4:45 at km. 75, and that it snowed again at 5:00 p.m. at km. 100.1 The third argument stems from an analysis of indexicals, or referential expressions that are only interpreted relative to the context of utterance, such as I, here, now. Korta and Perry (2012: 20) present Kaplan’s classical analysis of indexicals, which introduces the technical concepts of character, content, and context. In a nutshell, On Kaplan’s theory a sentence like “I am sitting” has a certain sort of meaning, which he calls “character,” that is modeled as a function from contexts to contents. “Content” is used by Kaplan as a theoretical term, that gets at the ordinary concept of “what is said” or “the proposition expressed.” Following the tradition that came from Carnap and had been developed in modal intensional logic, Kaplan took propositions to be intensions, that is, functions from possible words (or pairs of times and worlds – Kaplan’s own preference) to truth-values for sentences, and other appropriate values for other expressions. Contexts were sequences of an agent, a time, a location, and a world. So the character of the sentence “I am tired now,” as spoken by a at t gives us the proposition that a is tired at time t. (Korta and Perry 2012: 20)

In other words, a context consists of a speaker, a time, a location, and a world. What is crucial is that the proposition expressed, or intension, depends on the possible world in which it is indexed: In an alternative world, it is false 1

For more technical arguments, see Barwise and Perry (1983), the standard textbook on situation semantics.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.009 Published online by Cambridge University Press

185

186

JACQUES MOESCHLER

that it was snowing during my drive from Geneva to Mâcon, that is, in an alternative pair of times and places. We should bear in mind that intensional semantics is based on the intuition that “a proposition – the content of an assertion or belief – is a representation of the world as being a certain way” (Stalnaker 1978: 316). In other words, “a proposition is a rule determining a truth value as a function of the facts – the way the world is. More roughly and intuitively, a proposition is a way – any way – of picking a set of possible states of affairs – all those for which the proposition takes the value true” (p. 316). This approach to “what is said” (content in Kaplan’s terms, proposition in most other semantics approaches) is a function from a possible world to a truth-value. The most important element for our purposes is that meaning is described by Kaplan as a function from context to content, which Kaplan refers to as character.2 In other words, you choose a context, defined by a speaker a, a time t, and a place l, you pick a possible world defined by these indices, and you map your possible world onto a truth-value, which results in the character of the assertion, or its meaning. So, in intensional semantics, a proposition is contextually defined, mainly by a speaker and the time and place in which it is true, that is, the world in which its content has a truth-value. The agenda of intensional semantics might appear to be completely disconnected from pragmatic issues, but this is not the case. In their 2012 book, Korta and Perry suggest a version of pragmatics, termed critical pragmatics, that is based on intensional semantics. On the other hand, Wilson and Sperber (2012, chapter 7), in their seminal article “Linguistic Form and Relevance,” explicitly refer to Kaplan to show that indexicals encode truth-conditional procedural meanings, which are responsible for the computation of what they call explicature – the pragmatic enrichment of what is said. In order to disentangle these approaches, as well as the role of context in utterance interpretation, I will now return to Grice and his theory of implicature.

8.3 Gricean Pragmatics: Conversational Implicatures and Context One of the commonplaces about Grice and his theory of implicatures and meaning is to interpret them in contextualist terms. In fact, Grice’s theory is based on two strong assumptions: first, that meaning in language use is nonnatural; and second, that access to speaker meaning is based on cooperative communication. 2

Content, context, and character can be formally described in these ways: a. content = {truth-values}possible worlds = {1,0}W b. context = {agent, time, location} = {a, t, l} c. character = {content}context = ({1,0}W)a,t,l

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.009 Published online by Cambridge University Press

8 Context in Gricean and Neo-Gricean Pragmatics

The first claim is certainly the most important for a theory of meaning because it departs from the traditional view of linguistic meaning, based, from Saussure to lexical semantics, on the assumption that meaning is the result of conventions.3 On the contrary, for Grice, meaning in natural language is nonnatural, which implies that what is conveyed by a speaker goes beyond what lexical units conventionally mean: (4) Nonnatural meaning (Grice 1989: 219) “A meantNN something by x” is roughly equivalent to “A uttered x with the intention of inducing a belief by means of the recognition of this intention.”

This definition of non-natural meaning is crucial because it implies a double intention on the speaker’s part, which is known in Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson 1986: 29) as the informative intention (“the intention of inducing a belief”) and the communicative intention (“by means of the recognition of this intention”). This conception of meaning is not unrelated to what has been termed an implicature: Grice gives the example of a conversation between A and B about C, who works in a bank. A asks B how C is getting on in his job, and B replies (5): (5) Oh quite well, I think; he likes his colleagues, and he hasn’t been to prison yet.

Grice (1975: 43) comments that “it is clear that whatever B implied, suggested, meant, etc., in this example, is distinct from what B said, which was simply that C had not been to prison yet.” This intended meaning is called an implicature and is distinct from “what is said,” which is, “closely related to the conventional meaning of the words (the sentences) he has uttered” (p. 44). Whereas “in some cases the conventional meaning of the words used will determine what is implicated, besides helping to determine what is said” (Grice 1975: 44), most of the cases examined by Grice are cases of nonconventional implicatures, known as conversational implicatures, which are “essentially connected to certain general feature of discourse” (p. 45). According to Grice, our conversational exchanges are mainly characterized by cooperative efforts, leading to the participants’ acceptance of a common purpose or “at least a mutually accepted direction” (p. 45). This assumption is stated in the Cooperative Principle: (6) Cooperative Principle (Grice 1975: 45) Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.

In order to be cooperative, the speaker must respect, or exploit – that is, ostensively violate – nine maxims of conversations, which are grouped into four Kantian categories: Quantity, Quality, Relation, and Manner (Grice 1975: 3

An example is given by one basic assumption of cognitive grammar, defining a language as a set of form–meaning pairs: “The grammar of a language is defined as a structured inventory of conventional linguistic units” (Langacker 1991: 263–264).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.009 Published online by Cambridge University Press

187

188

JACQUES MOESCHLER

45–46). The maxims of Quantity state that the contribution must be “as informative as required” (Quantity1), but “not more informative than is required” (Quantity2). The supermaxim of Quality states that the contribution must be true: “Do not say what you believe to be false” (Quality1), and “Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence” (Quality2). The maxim of Relation requires the speaker to be relevant, that is, she must contribute to the topic of the conversation. Finally, the supermaxim of Manner, “Be perspicuous,” requires avoiding obscurity (Manner1) and ambiguity (Manner2), as well as being brief (Manner3) and ordered (Manner4). Because conversational implicatures are distinct from “what is said” (the content of the proposition expressed),4 and nonconventional, they must be calculated, or “worked out.” Here is how Grice describes this working-out process (1975: 50): To work out that a particular conversational implicature is present, the hearer will rely on the following data: (1) the conventional meaning of the words used, together with the identity of any references that may be involved; (2) the CP and its maxims; (3) the context, linguistic or otherwise, of the utterance; (4) other items of background knowledge; and (5) the fact (or supposed fact) that all relevant items falling under the previous headings are available to both participants and both participants know or assume this to be the case. (my emphasis)

In other words, what is implied in the working-out process is the linguistic meaning of the words uttered, the CP, and the maxims, as well as the context and background knowledge (known as the common ground, see Section 8.4). Context is, at first glance, a crucial feature for the calculation of a conversational implicature. However, the procedure of reaching a conversational implicature does not rely on contextual information. Here is how a hearer will reason in order to draw a conversational implicature (Grice 1975: 50): He [the speaker] has said that p; there is no reason to suppose that he is not observing the maxims, or at least the CP; he could not be doing this unless he thought that q; he knows (and knows that I know that he knows) that I can see that the supposition that he thinks that q I S required; he has done nothing to stop me thinking that q; he intends me to think, or is at least willing to allow me to think, that q; and so he has implicated that q.

In this working-out process, no contextual information is at stake: only the CP and the maxims are concerned. This general template is the case for what is known as generalized conversational implicatures (GCIs): GCIs are implicatures that are normally triggered by a linguistic form, “in the absence of special 4

“What is said” is more imprecise in Grice’s theory of implicature than in Kaplan’s intensional semantics. It can, however, be more easily approached from the standpoint of the classic philosophy of language, as demonstrated by Austin (1962: 94), who defines “‘meaning’ in the favorite philosophical sense of that word, i.e. with a certain sense and with a certain reference.” In other words, “what is said” corresponds to sense and reference, in the Fregean sense of the term (Frege [1892] 1948).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.009 Published online by Cambridge University Press

8 Context in Gricean and Neo-Gricean Pragmatics

circumstances” such as contextual or linguistic information, which cancels the implicature. When a conversational implicature is obtained without any linguistic contribution, the implicature is a particularized conversational implicature, defined as “an implicature [that] is carried by saying that p on a particular occasion in virtue of special features of the context” (Grice 1975: 56). The property that gives sense to the concept of conversational implicature, apart from its calculability, is its cancellability. If cancellation occurs, it must occur explicitly, “by the addition of a clause that states or implies that the speaker has opted out.” For instance, a classic case of cancellation results from an in fact clause, as in (7), where the scalar implicature “not all the students passed” is suspended: (7) Some, in fact all, the students passed.

But Grice imagines cases in which the implicature is contextually cancelled “if the form of utterance that usually carries it is used in a context that makes it clear that the speaker I S opting out” (Grice 1975: 56). For instance, in cases when meiosis occurs, such as in (8), the speaker intends to minimize and thus to cancel the stronger reading (9) in order to convince a policeman not to administer a blood alcohol test: (8) He drank a little. (9) He drank a lot.

In other words, generalized conversational implicatures can be cancelled either linguistically or contextually. The role of context therefore appears to be limited to one specific function: to allow for implicature cancellation. This raises the question of the status of implicatures as regards context, or in more general terms, the common ground. I will investigate this relationship in the following sections, first in terms of the compatibility between conventional implicatures and the common ground (Section 8.4), and second in terms of generalized conversational implicatures and context (Section 8.5).

8.4 Conventional Implicatures and the Common Ground Grice addressed the concept of conventional implicature (CI) in an extremely sketchy manner. His examples of connectives such as therefore suggest that a consequence relationship is added on to the assertions of the connected discourse segments, as in (10): (10) He is an Englishman; he is, therefore, brave.

For Grice, being brave is a consequence of being an Englishman, but he suggests that this consequence relationship is not “said” by the speaker, even if the speaker has “certainly indicated, and so implicated, that this is so” (1975:

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.009 Published online by Cambridge University Press

189

190

JACQUES MOESCHLER

45). Grice’s main argument to support this claim is that the discourse connective therefore does not contribute to the truth-conditions of the utterance: in a segment of the form p, therefore q, the truth-values of p and q are defined independently of the consequence-relation introduced by therefore. This relationship can also be accessed without the connective, as in (11), which clearly shows that therefore does not impact truth-conditions:5 (11) He is an Englishman; he is brave.

So, CI is an additional non-truth-conditional content to “what is said.” This non-truth-conditional content resembles a presupposition, which is also insensitive to the truth-value of the proposition expressed. Suppose that I tell you (12): (12) My daughter is in Japan.

In this case, the referential expression my daughter presupposes that “the speaker has a daughter.” But the same is true when I utter a negative sentence such as (13): (13) My daughter is not in Japan.

In this case, it is still true that “the speaker has a daughter.” Now, suppose that I want to show off by uttering that my daughter is in Japan, although I do not have a daughter. Is my assertion true or false? Some philosophers, including Strawson (1950), have argued that such assertions simply do not have truth-values. For instance, if we answer (14) to a previous statement such as (15), “we would certainly not say we were contradicting the statement that the king of France is wise. We are, rather, giving a reason for saying that the question whether it’s true or false simply doesn’t arise” (Strawson 1950: 330): (14) There is no king of France. (15) The king of France is wise.

Speakers’ presuppositions, therefore, have often been defined as background information, as belonging to the common ground (Stalnaker 1977). If this is true, two types of implied content crucially interact with context: conventional implicatures on the one hand, and presuppositions on the other. Whereas presuppositions are evaluated in terms of their belonging to the common ground,6 the relationship between conventional implicatures and the common ground is an open issue. Two key answers have been given, respectively, by Karttunen and Peters (1979) and Potts (2005). 5

6

When there is no connective, the implicature is conversational, more specifically a particularized conversational implicature. A presupposition is said to be accommodated when it gives new as opposed to old information, for instance, in the case that you do not know I have a daughter when you process my utterance My daughter is in Japan. See Beaver and Zeevat (2007) on accommodation.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.009 Published online by Cambridge University Press

8 Context in Gricean and Neo-Gricean Pragmatics

In one of the earliest approaches to conventional implicatures, Karttunen and Peters (1979: 14) define CIs as non-truth-conditional meanings which should contribute to the common ground:7 It has often been observed that what we here call conventional implicatures play a role in determining the felicity or appropriateness of utterances in conversational settings. As a general rule, in cooperative conversation a sentence ought to be uttered only if it does not conventionally implicate anything that is subject to controversy at that point in the conversation. Since the least controversial propositions of all are those in the common ground, which all participants already accept, ideally every conventional implicature ought to belong to the common set of presuppositions that the utterance of the sentence is intended to increment.

In other words, CIs are part of the common ground, defined as “the set of propositions that any participant is rationally justified in taking for granted,” or “the common ground or the common set of presumptions” (Karttunen and Peters 1979: 13). This implies that a second type of content (apart from the proposition or character in Kaplan’s terms) is sensitive to context: A CI must be compatible with the common ground. Intuitively, this makes sense: When a CI is triggered, because of its conventional but non-truth-conditional meaning, it is not supposed to add new information to the common ground. An example is the case of even. In uttering (16), a rational speaker cannot use even in an appropriate way if it is shared in the common ground that nobody except Bill likes Mary: (16) Even Bill likes Mary.

The proposition “others than Bill like Mary” is therefore still part of the common ground. On the other hand, the proposition “Bill is the least likely to like Mary” could be new information, because it might be unexpected for the hearer that Bill likes Mary. As this example shows, what is pertinent here is that none of this information is required to be contradictory with the common ground. If the knowledge that Bill likes Mary is shared, mutual, and unsurprising, the use of even would be inappropriate, because its CI would contradict a proposition in the common ground. The second type of approach to CIs is that of Potts (2005), which makes a different diagnosis: In his view Cis are speaker-oriented and antibackgrounding. Potts’ arguments are based on two types of empirical evidence, expressives on the one hand and supplements on the other. Expressives, like damn, idiot, fuck, etc., do not contribute to the truth-conditions of the proposition expressed; they only give information about the emotional state of the speaker: If I say (17), to 7

Conventional implicature has a troubled history: This concept was not developed in neo-Gricean approaches to implicatures, which primarily focused on generalized conversational implicatures (Horn 1989; Levinson 2000 among others). Relevance Theory completely ignored it, which has been reinterpreted as procedural meaning (Blakemore 1987; Cartons 2002). More controversially, CIs were strongly refuted by Bach (1999), who considered them an unnecessary concept.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.009 Published online by Cambridge University Press

191

192

JACQUES MOESCHLER

no one in particular after lunch, what damn adds to the proposition “I have to mow the lawn” is not information about the action I am going to undertake, but the fact that I am displeased about or unwilling to mow the lawn: (17) I have to mow the damn lawn.

This type of information is not at issue: Even though it does not contribute to the truth-conditions of the utterance, it makes a substantial contribution to speaker meaning in terms of her propositional attitude and emotions. This is not an anecdotal meaning, because ignoring its contribution to utterance meaning would have dramatic consequences as regards what the speaker means. A shallow processing, ignoring the CI, could mislead the addressee in determining the speaker meaning. The second piece of empirical evidence mentioned by Potts is supplements, which are linguistically realized by parentheticals and explicative relative clauses. Potts’ example (18) shows that the main function of the supplement is to add new information which is, however, not put in the foreground: (18) Sweden may export synthetic wolf urine – sprayed along roads to keep elk away – to Kuwait for use against camels.

The information carried by the supplement is secondary information, whose contribution is to make sense of the proposition expressed: In (18), the at-issue proposition deals with Swedish exportation of wolf urine to Kuwait, while the supplement explains why it is relevant. Potts terms this type of information antibackgrounding. In other words, the example of CIs shows that a second type of conventional meaning, parallel to propositional content, is context sensitive, but in a different way from conversational implicatures: Whereas CIs make contributions to the common ground based on a consistency criterion – a CI which is contradictory to the common ground would point at the inappropriateness of the at-issue entailment of the utterance – conversational implicatures must be checked against the common ground. When they are contradictory with certain propositions in the common ground, they must be explicitly cancelled, in the same way that false presuppositions which do not match the common ground must be explicitly rejected by the speaker. The double-check test for conversational implicatures will be described in Section 8.5. In Section 8.6, I will examine the question of whether generalized conversational implictures are default inferences, or whether on the contrary they are contextually triggered.

8.5 The Contextual Cancellation of Generalized Conversational Implicatures The main property of a conversational implicature is its cancellability. Among all the properties of conversational implicatures proposed by Grice (1975: 57–58) – cancellability, nondetachability, nonconventionality, carried

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.009 Published online by Cambridge University Press

8 Context in Gricean and Neo-Gricean Pragmatics

by the saying of what is said, and indeterminacy – cancellability is described by Sadock (1978: 292) as the best test to define conversational implicatures: “The [cancellability] test is based on the notion that conversation implicatures are not part of the conventional force of utterances but are figured out in context.” In other words, when a conversational implicature is cancelled, the cause is the context. How does this occur? The issue here is contextualization. Now, the simplest version of contextualization would say that context is that which differentiates between sentence meaning and utterance meaning. However, this straightforward explanation is incorrect. We have already observed that the character of an assertion is contextually determined, even though the context is defined as a set of indices, including a speaker, a time, and a place of utterance. So, a sentence is firstly and secondly contextualized, as stated by Gazdar (1979: 5): “we can treat the meaning of the utterance as the difference between the original context and the context arrived at by uttering the sentence. A reasonable goal for pragmatics is thus the provision of a function that will map E [the set of sentences of some natural language D mapping the set of contexts M] into M.” Meaning, in other words, is the result of context change. This assumption explains why Gazdar points out two steps in the computation of an implicature. First a potential implicature, or implicature, is computed, and second, following a second contextualization, the actual implicature is derived, but only in those cases in which the context does not cancel the potential implicature. Both (19) and (20) im-plicate (21), but only (19) implicates (21), or makes the potential implicature actual. In (20), the potential implicature is explicitly cancelled (Gazdar 1979: 135): (19) Some of the boys were there. (20) Some of the boys, in fact all of them, were there. (21) Not all of the boys were there.

The way a potential implicature can be triggered depends on quantitative scales, which differentiate between a strong scalar expression and a weaker one. In the above examples, define a quantitative scale in which all N VP entails some N VP, and some N VP im-plicates not all N VP. The same two-step computation process can also be applied to presuppositions, which explains how and why presuppositions can be cancelled (Gazdar 1979: 124): I will define the potential presupposition of sentences in terms of their components and constructions, as if potential presuppositions were something given to us by the lexicon and the syntax. . . . Sets of them [potential presuppositions or pre-suppositions] are assigned to sentences in a completely mechanical way. They are what the presuppositions would be if there was no “projection problem,” no “ambiguity” in negative sentences, and no contextsensitivity.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.009 Published online by Cambridge University Press

193

194

JACQUES MOESCHLER

For instance, (22) pre-supposes (23), but in (24) the pre-supposition is cancelled because of the new context: (22) John does not regret having failed. (23) John failed. (24) John does not regret having failed, because he passed.

As the above-mentioned examples show, context appears twice: first as a set of propositions, and second as the result of the utterance interpretation, which contributes to the modification of the context or its confirmation (when no new information is added). It must be observed that this second step does not behave in the same way for conversational implicatures and presuppositions. In terms of presuppositions, the difference between (22) and (24) is negation: Negation is descriptive or internal in (22) – behaving like a hole – whereas it is metalinguistic or external in (24), and behaves a plug (Gazdar 1979: 109).8 On the other hand, when an im-plicature (potential implicature) is cancelled no negation is required, as shown in (20). Only an explicit cancelation is required, and it can be introduced, for example, by in fact.9 However, metalinguistic negation can also cancel an implicature: In this case the cancelled implicature is the im-plicature of its positive counterpart which contains a scalar predicate. For instance, the predicate excellent can be metalinguistically negated to mean outstanding, as in (25): (25) Your paper is not excellent, it is outstanding.

Outstanding entails excellent, which excludes the ordinary or descriptive use of negation, because this would give rise to a contradiction: (26) # It is not the case that your paper is excellent, it is outstanding.

While the positive counterpart (27) quantitative–im-plicates (28), which corresponds to the negation of an upper-bound predicate, the cancelled proposition in (25) is the im-plicature (28): (27) Your paper is excellent. (28) Your paper is no more than excellent.

The implicature (28) is obtained through the presumption that the speaker respects the first maxim of quantity (Quantity1), which states that the contribution must be as informative as required. In uttering (27), a cooperative speaker implicates that she cannot say more: in other words, the addressee’s

8

9

On metalinguistic negation, see the classic works by Horn (1985, 1989). Other in-depth works are Carston (2002), Noh et al. (2013), Blochowiak and Grisot (2018), and Moeschler (2018, 2019). The usual test, introduced by Grice (1989: 214), is the but-test: “I can use the first of these [‘Those three rings on the bell (of the bus) mean that the bus is full’] and go on to say, ‘But it isn’t in fact full – the conductor has made a mistake.’”

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.009 Published online by Cambridge University Press

8 Context in Gricean and Neo-Gricean Pragmatics

paper is not outstanding. This meaning is an implicature, since it can be cancelled, as (29) demonstrates: (29) Your paper is excellent, and even outstanding.

To sum up, a conversational implicature can be cancelled when it does not fit the common ground. When the implicature is triggered by a linguistic expression – when it is a generalized conversational implicature – the cancellation must be explicit and cannot be left to the context. On the other hand, when the implicature is particularized, its cancellation can be left implicit. This is exactly what happens in the following example (Reboul 2019: 77): (30) Q: Do you have any bank accounts in Swiss banks, Mr. Bronston? A: No, sir. Q: Have you ever? A: The company had an account there for about six months, in Zurich.

The questioner (Q) is an American judge and the answerer (A) an American businessman accused of having opened an account in a Swiss bank. As explained by Anne Reboul, The relevant utterance is the second answer . . . . It implicitly communicates the false information that Bronston did not have a (personal) account in Swiss banks, while, as a matter of fact, he did. Bronston clearly did not communicate this information explicitly in his second answer. In his first answer, he communicated explicitly that, at the moment of utterance, he did not have such an account, which was true. However, he had had one before. And he communicated implicitly through his second answer that he had not. (p. 77)

If Bronston had been cooperative, he would have respected Quantity1, and therefore the judge could have inferred, as an implicature, that Bronston had not had a bank account in a Swiss bank before. However, the judge understood that the implicature was false; in other words that Bronston was not being cooperative. The judge requested a retrial for perjury, but he lost the case, because Bronston did not lie: the judge assumed that Bronston did not comply with Quality, whereas in fact he did not comply with Quantity. In other words, the cancellation of a particularized conversational implicature is made possible by its compatibility with the common ground. The issue, therefore, is the addressee’s capacity to address the common ground and to check whether the implicature is true or false. The relevant points here are the reliability of the speaker and the addressee’s confidence in the speaker. A more general question now arises: Are generalized conversational implicatures triggered by default or not? The neo-Gricean approach answers in the affirmative, as I will demonstrate in Section 8.6.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.009 Published online by Cambridge University Press

195

196

JACQUES MOESCHLER

8.6 Are Generalized Conversational Implicatures Default Inferences? One is tempted to view GCIs as default interpretation. This view is possible only if, firstly, implicatures are the result of general principles or rules which apply by default, based on some heuristics, and secondly, if they are based on a precise hierarchy between types of inference. This model, which was developed in Levinson (2000), has recently been challenged because of two types of facts: The first is the experimental testing of the predictions of the default interpretation; the second is the difficulty of obtaining, in an automatic procedure, the correct implicature. Let us start with the principled approach to speaker meaning, which was first put forward by Horn (1984) and developed by Levinson (2000). Their idea was to reduce the nine Gricean maxims of conversation to two principles, which are generalizations of the maxims of Quantity on the one hand, and the maxim of Relation of the other.10 According to Horn (1984: 13), these two principles are formulated as follows: (31) The Q-Principle Make your contribution sufficient (cf. Quantity). Say as much you can (given Relation). (32) The R-Principle Make your contribution necessary (cf. Relation, Quantity, Manner). Say no more than you must (given Quantity).

Levinson’s formulation is slightly different: The R-Principle is termed the I(informativity)-Principle (Levinson 2000: 76, 114): (33) Q-Principle Do not provide a statement that is informationally weaker than your knowledge allows. (34) I-Principle Say as little as necessary.

The idea behind both formulations is straightforward: Either the speaker gives the strongest information (Quantity1) or he says as little as necessary (Relevance). The two principles are therefore balanced and operate when specific lexical items or linguistic constructions are addressed. These are respectively described as Q- and I-heuristics (Levinson 2000: 35, 37): (35) Q-Heuristics What isn’t said, isn’t. 10

I do not have enough space here to develop a third principle, based on the Gricean maxims of Manner, the M-Principle: “Indicate an abnormal, nonstereotypical situation by using a marked expression that contrasts with those you would use to describe the corresponding normal, stereotypical situation” (Levinson 2000: 136). This principle triggers M-implicatures, which indicate abnormal situations. The classic example is the contrast between stopping the car and getting the car to stop, which M-implicates an abnormal way of stopping the car.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.009 Published online by Cambridge University Press

8 Context in Gricean and Neo-Gricean Pragmatics

(36) I-Heuristics What is expressed simply is stereotypically exemplified.

Scalar implicatures that are triggered by weak expressions in quantitative scales, for instance, are examples of Q-Heuristics, whereas pragmatic enrichments illustrate I-Heuristics: (37) Quantitative scales , , , , , etc. (38) Pragmatic enrichments a. conditional perfection: if for if and only if b. conjunction buttressing: and for and then c. bridging: the X . . . the Y for Y is a part of X d. negative strengthening: do not like for dislike etc.11

In other words, when an expression like those mentioned above occurs in an utterance, the default inference is triggered. The implicature is cancelled only if there is a conflict between the implicature and the common ground or between the implicature and a stronger inference. Levinson (2000: 49) describes the process in this way: The process of updating the common ground with the communicative content of a new utterance can then be treated as the ordered incrementation of that background with the entailments, implicatures, and presuppositions of the utterance. . . . Informally and metaphorically, we can think of the common ground as a bucket, holding all the facts mutually assumed, either because they’re common knowledge or because they have been asserted and accepted. (my emphasis)

The order of the incrementation contains the condition that “each incrementation is consistent with the content of the bucket” (Levinson 2000: 50): (39) Order of incremented information a. Entailments b. Q GCIs (. . .) c. M GCIs d. I GCIs

In other words, entailments are stronger than GICs. Among GICs, Q-implicatures (Q GCIs) are stronger than M-implicatures (M GCIs), which are stronger than I-implicatures (I GCIs). To give the simplest possible illustration, in the case of a scalar implicature whose implicature is cancelled, this cancellation occurs because the stronger expression has been made explicit, and particularly because this content is entailed and as such cancels the 11

Experimental works on pragmatic enrichment are for conditional perfection, Blochowiak et al. (2022); for conjunction buttressing, Noveck et al. (2009) and Blochowiak and Castelain (2018); for negative strengthening, Gotzner et al. (2018).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.009 Published online by Cambridge University Press

197

198

JACQUES MOESCHLER

implicature. The following incremented information explains why example (40) is not a contradiction: (40) Some students, in fact all, were at the party. a. Implicature: not all students were at the party. b. Entailment: all students were at the party. c. Cancellation of the implicature: it is not the case that not all of the students were at the party. d. Incrementation of the common ground: all students were at the party.

Therefore, as the neo-Gricean approach predicts, only the explicitation of the negation of the Q-implicature makes entailment (40b) possible. This explains why (41) is generally not interpreted as (40b): (41) Some students were at the party. Implicature: not all students were at the party

This prediction is very strong. But it raises three major points. First, there are contexts in which a Q-implicature is not the preferred interpretation; that is, there are contexts in which the default pragmatic interpretation is not appropriate. Second, the results of experiments on Q-implicatures do not confirm the predictions of the default interpretation. Third, scalar implicatures cannot be explained by referring to the Gricean maxims alone. I will develop these issues in Section 8.7.

8.7 The Role of Context in Scalar Implicature Computation Let us start with the third issue. Fox (2007) has shown that, in the case of or, which belongs to the quantitative scale , it is not possible to derive the scalar implicature not and (43b). The only possible derivation is the ignorance implicature (43c): (42) Sue talked to John or Fred. (43) a. Basic inference Sue talked to John or Fred or both. b. Scalar inference Sue didn’t talk to both John and Fred. c. Ignorance inference The speaker doesn’t know that Sue talked to John. The speaker doesn’t know that Sue talked to Fred.

The reason why (43b) is not inferable is as follows: First, it is evident that each disjunct is more informative than the disjunction; second, by referring to Quality1 (“Do not say what you believe to be false”), we can infer that the speaker believes that her utterance, which is a disjunction, is true. But the speaker does not know that both the first and the second disjunct are true because of Fox’s reformulation of the maxim of Quantity:

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.009 Published online by Cambridge University Press

8 Context in Gricean and Neo-Gricean Pragmatics

(44) Maxim of Quantity (Fox 2007: 73) If S1 and S2 are both relevant to the topic of the conversation and S1 is more informative than S2, if the speaker believes that both are true, the speaker should utter S1 rather than S2.

Therefore, in Fox’s view, we conclude that the speaker is ignorant of the truth or the falsehood of p and q (the stronger expression), which is as relevant in terms of the topic of the conversation as the disjunction p or q. In other words, with Quantity and Quality, only the ignorance implicature can be driven.12 How can we now derive the scalar implicature “it is not the case that p and q” of p or q? According to Chierchia (2013: 102), the generation of a scalar implicature requires an exhaustification of the assertion: “The hearer, running through relevance, quantity, and opinionatedness, concludes that the assertion is the only member of the alternative set that is, in fact, true according to the speaker.” In other words, the generation of a scalar implicature requires, along with the maxims of Quantity and Quality, something that Chierchia calls opinionatedness: the fact that the speaker has an opinion about the truth or falsity of the utterance, and also about the truth or falsity of the stronger expression p and q. So, in the case of p or q, the speaker’s opinion is that the conjunction p and q is false. For this opinion to be true, the speaker must access a set of alternatives. This is exactly what Horn’s scales provide. But instead of being the starting point of a default inference, accessing the scalemate is required throughout an entire reasoning process. This type of reasoning, which targets or-scalar implicature, is illustrated in (45) (Chierchia 2013: 101): (45) a. b. i. ii. iii. iv. v. vi. vii.

John or Bill will show up. John and Bill will show up. The speaker has said [a] and not [b], which, presumably, would have been also relevant. [relevance] [b] entails [a], and hence [b] is more informative than [a]. If the speaker believes that [b] holds, she would have said so. [quantity] It is not the case that the speaker believes that [b] holds. The speaker has an opinion as to whether [b] holds. [opinionatedness] The speaker takes [b] to be false. The speaker is conveying that John or Bill but not John and Bill show up. [scalar implicature]

As this example shows, a scalar implicature is the result of a reasoning, and not a default inference. Experimental data challenge the default approach, too. First, in the large number of experimental works on scalar implicatures,13 the general trend is 12

13

However, Zhan (2018) has given experimental arguments showing that both scalar and ignorance implicatures are computed immediately when encountering the connective or. See among others Papafragou and Musolino (2003) and Breheny et al. (2006). For a synthesis, see Noveck (2018, chapters 6 and 7) and Zufferey et al. (2019, chapter 7).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.009 Published online by Cambridge University Press

199

200

JACQUES MOESCHLER

that scalar implicatures are not default inferences. Breheny et al. (2006: 434) claim for instance that “our results suggest that these scalar implicatures are dependent on the conversational context and that they show none of the autonomy predicted by the Default view.” In other words, the default inference approach advocated by neo-Gricean pragmatists is not backed up by experimental data. These empirical results are not surprising. It was demonstrated in the earliest days of experimental trends in pragmatics that implicatures are costly: they require more cognitive efforts than semantic or logical readings, at least in terms of the processing of logical words (Noveck 2001; Noveck and Reboul 2008 for a synthesis).14 Second, experimental research has proven15 that scalar implicatures are not generated in some specific contexts, such as a context of politeness. For example, the scalar implicature of some, in other words “not all,” is not triggered in face-threatening contexts (Brown and Levinson 1987), as opposed to its logical reading, which would be “some if not all.” Bonnefon et al. (2009: 251, 255) presented the following results: Imagine that you have joined a poetry club, which consists of five members in addition to you. Each week one member writes a poem, and the five other members discuss the poem in the absence of its author. This week, it is your turn to write a poem and to let the others discuss it. After the discussion, one fellow member confides to you that “Some people hated your poem.” . . . When X in “some X-ed” threatens the face of the listener, individuals are less likely to infer that the speaker meant or knew that not all X-ed.

How can we explain this very crucial observation? Here is a possible explanation (Moeschler 2021): “It is obvious that face-work, which implies minimisation to preserve the hearer’s positive face, or his self-image, wins over the process of the working out of the implicature triggered by some. This is a situation in which two types of logic clash: the logic of rationality and reasoning is ruled out by the logic of politeness.” In other words, the logical reading has a minimization effect in terms of politeness. This is not surprising: The logical reading is weaker than the pragmatic one and is less specific. In a face-threatening context, therefore, the logical reading of some is compatible with its maximal reading (“all”), which would be strongly face-threatening if expressed explicitly. By contrast, the scalar implicature reading would be difficult for the speaker, because it might be the case that that implicature (“not all”) is false, while the logical reading (“all”) is optimally relevant. From the perspective of the I-Principle it could be argued, however, that the speaker says less to convey more: According to this interpretation, face-threatening contexts would favor an I-implicature over a Q-implicature. But context is crucial, even in this interpretation, and no default interpretation is at stake. 14

15

More recent experimental research has shown that scalar implicature is not a uniform phenomenon (Doran et al. 2009), and that the processing cost depends on the semantic property of the scalar word (van Tiel et al. 2019). See among others Bonnefon et al. (2009), Mazzarella (2015), Terkourafi et al. (2020).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.009 Published online by Cambridge University Press

8 Context in Gricean and Neo-Gricean Pragmatics

8.8 Conclusion This chapter has investigated the contribution of context in the triggering of meaning and has covered issues ranging from propositional context, including presuppositions, to conventional implicatures and conversational implicatures. A first nontrivial finding was that expressed propositions are context-sensitive, as are conventional implicit meanings including conventional implicatures and presuppositions. Second, the focus on generalized conversational implicatures confirmed a limited contribution to context, which most often becomes apparent when implicatures are explicitly cancelled. However, as demonstrated through theoretical and experimental arguments, the prototypical examples of scalar implicatures, mainly triggered by logical words like some and or, are in fact context sensitive. We can therefore draw the conclusion that context is pervasive in the computation of implicatures. In this case it is possible to assert that the use of Grice’s concepts, such as the Cooperative Principles and the maxims of conversation, give rise to a contextual mechanism. This conclusion goes far beyond the classical anticontextualist interpretations of Gricean and neo-Gricean pragmatics.

References Austin, J. L. (1962). How to Do Things with Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bach, K. (1999). The myth of conventional implicatures. Linguistics and Philosophy, 22(4), 327–366. Barwise, J., and Perry, J. (1983). Situations and Attitudes. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Beaver, D., and Zeevat, H. (2007). Accommodation. In G. Ramchand and C. Reiss (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Interfaces (pp. 503–538). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Blakemore, D. (1987). Semantic Constraints on Relevance. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Blochowiak, J., and Castelain, T. (2018). How logical is natural language conjunction? An experimental investigation of the French conjunction et. In P. Saint-Germier (ed.), Language, Evolution and Mind: Essays in Honour of Anne Reboul (pp. 97–125). London: College Publications Blochowiak, J., and Grisot, C. (2018). The pragmatics of descriptive and metalinguistic negation: experimental data from French. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics, 3(1), 50. https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.440. Blochowiak, J., Castelain, T., Rodriguez-Villagra, O. A., and Musolino, J. (2022). If and only if people were logical! The effect of pragmatic enrichment on reasoning with abstract and realistic materials. Journal of Pragmatics, 197, 137–158. Bonnefon, J.-F., Feeney, A., and Villejoubert, G. (2009). When some is actually all: Scalar inference in face-threatening contexts. Cognition, 112, 249–258. Breheny, R., Katsos, N., and Williams, J. (2006). Are generalized conversational implicatures generated by default? An on-line investigation into the role of context in generating pragmatic inferences. Cognition, 100(3), 434–363.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.009 Published online by Cambridge University Press

201

202

JACQUES MOESCHLER

Brown, P., and Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some Universals in Language Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Carston, R. (2002). Thoughts and Utterances: The Pragmatics of Explicit Communication. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Chierchia, G. (2013). Logic in Grammar: Polarity, Free Choice, and Interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Doran, R., Baker, R., McNabb, Y., Larson, M., and Ward, G. (2009). On the non-unified nature of scalar implicature: An empirical investigation. International Review of Pragmatics, 1, 211–248. Fox, D. (2007). Free choice and the theory of scalar implicatures. In U. Sauerland and P. Stateva (eds.), Presupposition and Implicature in Compositional Semantics (pp. 71–120). Basingstoke: Palgrave. Frege, G. [1892] (1948). Sense and reference. The Philosophical Review, 57(3): 209–230. Gazdar, G. (1979). Pragmatics: Implicatures, Presupposition, and Logical Form. New York: Academic Press. Gotzner, N., Solt, S., and Benz, A. (2018). Scalar diversity, negative strengthening, and adjectival semantics. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 1659. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01659. Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole and J. L. Morgan (eds.), Syntax and Semantics, Vol. III: Speech Acts (pp. 41–58). New York: Academic Press. Grice, H. P. (1989). Meaning. In Studies in the Way of Words. (pp. 213–223). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Horn, L. R. (1984). Toward a new taxonomy for pragmatic inference. In D. Schiffrin (ed.), Form and Use in Context: Linguistic Applications (GURT’84) (pp. 11–42). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Horn, L. R. (1985). Metalinguistic negation and pragmatic ambiguity. Language, 61(1), 121–174. Horn, L. R. (1989). A Natural History of Negation. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Horn, L. R. (2004). Implicature. In L. R. Horn and G. Ward (eds.), The Handbook of Pragmatics (pp. 3–28). Oxford: Blackwell. Kaplan, D. 1989. Demonstratives. In J. Almog, J. Perry, and H. Wettstein (eds.), Themes from Kaplan (pp. 481–563). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Karttunen, L. and Peters, S. (1979). Conventional implicatures. In C.-K. Oh and D. A. Dinneen (eds.), Syntax and Semantics, Vol. XI: Presuppositions (pp. 1–56). New York: Academic Press. Korta, K., and Perry, J. (2012). Critical Pragmatics: An Inquiry into Reference and Communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Langacker, R. (1991). Concept, Image, and Symbol: The Cognitive Basis of Grammar. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Levinson, S. C. (2000). Presumptive Meanings: A Theory of Generalized Conversational Implicatures. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Mazzarella, D. (2015). Politeness, relevance and scalar inferences. Journal of Pragmatics, 79, 93–106. Moeschler, J. (2018). A set of semantic and pragmatic criteria for descriptive vs. metalinguistic negation. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics, 3(1), 58. 1–30. https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.439. Moeschler, J. (2019). Non-Lexical Pragmatics: Time, Causality and Logical Words. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.009 Published online by Cambridge University Press

8 Context in Gricean and Neo-Gricean Pragmatics

Moeschler, J. (2021). Why Language? What Pragmatics Tells Us about Language and Communication. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Noh, E. J., Choo, H., and Koh, S. (2013). Processing metalinguistic negation: Evidence from eye-tracking experiments. Journal of Pragmatics, 57, 1–18. Noveck, I. (2001). When children are more logical than adults: Investigations of scalar implicatures. Cognition, 78(2), 165–188. Noveck, I. (2018). Experimental Pragmatics: The Making of a Cognitive Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Noveck, I., and Sperber, D., eds. (2004). Experimental Pragmatics. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Noveck, I., and Reboul, A. (2008). Experimental pragmatics: A Gricean turn in the study of language. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12(11), 425–431. Noveck I., Chevallier, C., Chevaux, F., Musolino J., and Bott L. (2009). Children enrichment of conjunctive sentences in context. In P. De Brabanter M. and M. Kissine (eds.), Current Research in the Semantics/ Pragmatics Interface (pp. 211–234) Bingley: Emerald. Papafragou, A., and Musolino, J. (2003). Scalar implicatures: Experiments at the semantics/pragmatics interface. Cognition, 86, 253–282. Potts, C. (2005). The Logic of Conventional Implicatures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reboul, A. (2019). Particularized Conversational Implicatures: Why there are Conversational Implicatures. In S. Zufferey, J. Moeschler, and A. Reboul, Implicatures (pp. 67–87). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Recanati, F. (1994). Contextualism and anti-contextualism in the philosophy of language. In S. L. Tsohatzidis (ed.), Foundations of Speech Act Theory (pp. 156–166). London: Routledge. Sadock, J. (1978). On testing for conversational implicature. In P. Cole (ed.), Syntax and Semantics, Vol. IX: Pragmatics (pp. 281–297). New York: Academic Press. Searle, J. R. (1969). Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Searle, J. R. (1979). Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sperber, D., and Wilson, D. (1986). Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Stalnaker, R. (1977). Pragmatic Presuppositions. In A. Rogers, B. Wall, and J. P. Murphy (eds.), Proceedings of the Texas Conference on Performatives, Presuppositions and Implicatures (pp. 135–147). Arlington: Center for Applied Linguistics. Stalnaker, R. (1978). Assertion. In P. Cole (ed.), Syntax and Semantics, Vol. IX: Pragmatics (pp. 315–332). New York: Academic Press. Strawson, P. (1950). On referring. Mind, 59(235), 320–344. Terkourafi, M., Weissman B., and Roy, J. (2020). Different scalar terms affected by face differently. International Review of Pragmatics, 12, 1–43. van Tiel, B., Pankratz, E., and Sun, C. (2019). Scales and scalarity: Processing scalar inferences. Journal of Memory and Language, 105, 93–107. Wilson, D., and Sperber, D. (2012). Meaning and Relevance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.009 Published online by Cambridge University Press

203

204

JACQUES MOESCHLER

Zhan, L. (2018). Scalar and ignorance inferences are both computed immediately upon encountering the sentential connective: The online processing of sentences with disjunction using the visual world paradigm. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 61. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00061. Zufferey, S., Moeschler, J., and Reboul, A. (2019). Implicatures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.009 Published online by Cambridge University Press

9 Sociopragmatics and Context Sophia Marmaridou

9.1 Introduction Arising in the domain of the philosophy of language, pragmatics has been broadly defined as the study of language in use, or “the general conditions of the communicative use of language” (Leech 1983: 10). Within this framework, a distinction has been drawn between sociopragmatics, relating pragmatic meaning to an assessment of participants’ social distance, the language community’s social rules and appropriateness norms, discourse practices and accepted behaviors, and pragmalinguistics, referring to the study of the particular resources that a given language provides for conveying illocutionary and interpersonal meaning (Leech 1983; Thomas 1983). For example, the T/V distinction is available in several languages, including French and Greek, to mark social proximity or distance between interlocutors and, as such, is an object of pragmalinguistic study. How this distinction is deployed to create, or reflect, social context at the time of the utterance is addressed within the area of sociopragmatics. The impact of this distinction has been particularly felt in the conceptual organization of some theoretical constructs in the field of applied linguistics, such as pragmatic failure, pragmatic transfer, and pragmatic development (see Marmaridou 2011). Moreover, this distinction has also informed historical pragmatics, or pragmaphilology, describing the contextual aspects of historical texts (Jucker 2006). In this framework, historical sociopragmatics focuses on the interaction between specific aspects of social context and particular historical language use that leads to pragmatic meanings. Conversely, it also leads to the reconstruction of contexts on the basis of historical texts, the latter viewed as carrying evidence of, or projecting, their own contexts (Culpeper 2009). Notably, the association between language and social context in sociopragmatic research has not been typically held to be systematically encoded in language. This seems to follow directly from its differentiation from pragmalinguistics, which, as already noted, is the locus of linguistic resources and

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.010 Published online by Cambridge University Press

206

SOPHIA MARMARIDOU

regularity. While the distinction between pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics seems less relevant in a wider conception of pragmatics as a “general cognitive, social, and cultural perspective on linguistic phenomena in relation to their usage in forms of behaviour” (Verschueren 1999: 7), yet, when maintained, it still reflects the separation of linguistic form from the concept of context as a cognitive, social, and linguistic construct (Fetzer 2011). Admittedly, context is not easy to pin down and, therefore, its association with language in a principled manner is a challenging task. In view of the above, and within a Construction Grammar framework (Fried and Östman 2004), the aim of this chapter is to show that the locus of sociopragmatic analysis, Leech’s “local contexts,” can in fact be viewed as the domain of socioculturally defined genres that are often associated with particular (genre) constructions. The question to be addressed in this framework is to what extent speakers’ understanding of context is systematic, conventional, and, hence, an inherent part of grammar and the description of language. Construction Grammar is well suited to address this issue in that it seeks to account for language in its totality, from highly productive patterns of language to more idiomatic and conventional expressions, and from sentencelevel to discourse-level constructions. The data to be discussed include extracts from recipes (Östman 2005; Ruppenhofer and Michaelis 2010), labelese (Ruppenhofer and Michaelis 2010), couple talk (Antonopoulou et al. 2015), stage directions (Nikiforidou 2021), and TV shows (Marmaridou, forthcoming). On this evidence, it is possible to argue that sociopragmatic context, typically encoded at the meso-level of genre, is often associated with a set of discourse specifications that are routinely incorporated in the description of a language’s grammatical constructions, thereby linking context to grammatical form. To respond to the above-stated aim, it is necessary to trace the relationship between sociopragmatics and context. As will become clear in the following sections, the latter has been variously construed as the situation in which communication is taking place, or as the societal conditions of a speech event in which interlocutors are engaged, or as a cognitive object comprising knowledge schemas available to interlocutors during communication (Fetzer 2011). In a sense, the development of sociopragmatics as a research program within the broader field of pragmatics mirrors corresponding developments in perspectivizing context and, as a result, has informed research areas such as L2 pedagogy, historical pragmatics, and pragmatic approaches to Genre. In what follows, the concept of context will be focused upon as it emerges in the sociopragmatics agenda, the latter associated with what Leech (1983: 10) has termed general pragmatics. Toward this attempt, and in the next section, the origins of sociopragmatics will be sought in Leech’s (1983) theory of pragmatics and Thomas’s (1983) investigation of L2 learners’ pragmatic failure, with a view to highlighting the understanding of context in their joint program. In Sections 9.3 and 9.4 sociopragmatics and co-text will be associated with L2 pedagogy and historical pragmatics respectively, in an attempt to

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.010 Published online by Cambridge University Press

9 Sociopragmatics and Context

bring forward the development of the concept of context within each field of sociopragmatic inquiry. Section 9.5 will focus on genre as a social, functional, and cognitive construct encompassing contextual parameters of linguistic communication. On the basis of examples drawn from different genres, it will be argued that the latter are characterized by specific constructional reflexes of sociopragmatic context which are available to speakers of the language as knowledge schemas, i.e., as part of a speaker’s knowledge of the language. The concluding section summarizes the basic claims of the paper and poses questions for further research.

9.2 A View of the Origins of the Sociopragmatics Program The emergence of the term sociopragmatics is associated with its corresponding term pragmalinguistics, both introduced in Thomas (1983) and Leech (1983) in their joint attempt to define the object of pragmatic study and its role in L2 pedagogy. To appreciate the need to (re)define the object of pragmatics, as these scholars did, one has to resort to the so-called narrow view of this field as it emerged in American pragmatism, represented in the semiotic tradition of Peirce and Morris in the 1930s, and in the English (Anglo-) ordinary language philosophy of the 1950s, starting with Wittgenstein and Austin and developing later into Searle’s theory of speech acts and intentionality, and Grice’s theory of meaning and communication – hence the name AngloAmerican tradition of pragmatics. All the above-mentioned scholars, among others, had an understanding of linguistic meaning as residing in the use of language by its speakers in the social world and were quite explicit about this idea. For example, Morris (1938: 108) defines pragmatics as in the following extract: It is a sufficiently accurate characterization of pragmatics to say that it deals with the biotic aspects of semiosis, that is, with all the psychological, biological, and sociological phenomena which occur in the functioning of signs.

Similarly, Austin delimits the category of performative utterances, and later of illocutionary acts, as part of institutionalized procedures conforming to social convention, as spelt out in felicity conditions, which are in fact conditions of appropriateness of use (1962: 14–15). In further elaborating his theory of speech acts with the concept of the illocutionary force of a speaker’s utterance, he introduces an intentional orientation, to be taken up in Searle’s (1975) theory of speech acts and intentionality and Grice’s (1975) theory of communication and implicature. It should be pointed out that these so-called ordinary language philosophers must be credited with a shift of emphasis from language as description to language as action and the consequent focus on the speaker, or addressee, and context (Marmaridou 2000: 22). Defining pragmatics as the study of language use, complementing syntax and semantics in accounting for linguistic meaning, has been associated with a number of problems extensively

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.010 Published online by Cambridge University Press

207

208

SOPHIA MARMARIDOU

discussed in Levinson (1983: 7–32), who finally points out that “the upper bound of pragmatics is provided by the borders of semantics and the lower bound by sociolinguistics,” while at the same time admitting that “drawing a boundary between sociolinguistic and pragmatic phenomena is likely to be an exceedingly difficult enterprise” (p. 29). It is probably such problems that led Leech (1983) and Thomas (1983) to proceed on the one hand to a definition of general pragmatics as comprising the interaction of the Cooperative and Politeness Principles and, on the other, to the introduction of two subfields of pragmatic study, namely sociopragmatics and pragmalinguistics. Sociopragmatics refers to more specific, “local” conditions on language use that account for the variability of different cultures or language communities, different social situations, or different social classes (Leech 1983: 10). Pragmalinguistics, on the other hand, concerns “the study of the more linguistic end of pragmatics – where we consider the particular resources which a given language provides for conveying particular illocutions” (Leech 1983: 11). It transpires from the above that these two subfields of pragmatics primarily target appropriateness conditions of speech acts in particular sociocultural contexts, typically in instances of face-to-face interaction. Emphasis is placed on a set of parameters that guide interlocutors’ cooperative communication, such as their relative social status, their institutional roles, and the (in)formality of the situation within what is perceived as the cultural norm.

9.3 Sociopragmatics in L2 Pedagogy The contribution of the pragmalinguistics/sociopragmatics distinction to L2 pedagogy needs to be assessed against the overall aim of L2 instruction, which was to enable learners to communicate in a foreign language (mainly English) with native speakers of that language. Therefore, emphasis was placed on the linguistic realization of speech acts in culturally appropriate ways, in a largely comparative and cross-cultural framework that associates linguistic and cultural difference with communication difficulty. In this framework, Thomas (1983) must be credited with the incorporation of the sociopragmatics/pragmalinguistics distinction in L2 pedagogy in her investigation of issues relating to L2 linguistic competence. She views the latter as consisting of grammatical competence (i.e., knowledge of phonology, syntax, and semantics) and pragmatic competence as “the ability to use language effectively in order to achieve a specific purpose and to understand language in context” (Thomas 1983: 94). In this framework, pragmatic failure reflects the L2 learner’s inability to either recognize the illocutionary force of a speaker’s utterance or produce an utterance expressing her intentions in a socially appropriate way. While accepting that there are no strict boundaries between the two fields, the author shows that the inappropriate choice of forms and strategies in performing a speech act leads to pragmalinguistic failure, whereas the inability to recognize the size of imposition of a speech act in a particular culture, the existence of taboos, or

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.010 Published online by Cambridge University Press

9 Sociopragmatics and Context

differing assessments of relative power or social distance between interlocutors in it, leads to sociopragmatic failure. Prominent in this discussion is the issue of politeness which, on the one hand, belongs to the object of general pragmatics and, on the other, is the cornerstone of appropriateness in performing speech acts. It should be noted that in her discussion of pragmalinguistic failure, Thomas (1983: 101) acknowledges the predictability and highly conventionalized form of certain utterances to perform particular speech acts, such as the often-quoted “Can you do X . . .” example, which can be fairly easily taught in an L2 context. At the same time, the identification of social roles and stereotypes, power relations between interlocutors relating to age, social status, or dialect, socioculturally based evaluations of situations and linguistic value judgments constitute social variables that L2 learners must take into account in order to employ the appropriate linguistic forms in their performance of speech acts. At a theoretical level, the study of such variants is typically part of sociolinguistics, which raises the methodological issue of the dividing line between this field of investigation and sociopragmatics. In other words, while pragmalinguistics seems to cover the micro-level of analysis of language use, i.e., the linguistic end of the interaction, sociolinguistics must be seen as the macro-level specifying the parameters that affect the interlocutor’s decisions on what it is appropriate to say on particular occasions of use. This allocates sociopragmatics the task of addressing the interface between the two and specifying this meso-level of analysis, i.e., the local context of language use. The same theoretical concerns emerge in the subsequent focus on developmental issues in L2 learning, which has brought to the fore the issue of pragmatic transfer as an aspect of an L2 learner’s interlanguage (Kasper and Rose 2002). However, the lack of sharp boundaries between pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics is also testified in studies of pragmatic transfer and L2 development, as it is usually difficult to diagnose the source of transfer in a learner’s inappropriate use of a speech act strategy at any particular stage of L2 development. Regardless of the indeterminacy of the findings of L2 acquisition and developmental research, the subfields of pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics have informed L2 teaching practices more successfully, as one might expect. Given that the widely accepted aim of L2 teaching is to enable successful communication in a foreign language, the distinction between the above subfields serves to familiarize learners with the appropriate use of linguistic resources in L2 to convey communicative acts and encode interpersonal meaning on the one hand, and, on the other, to enable them to perceive, and respond accordingly to, the sociocultural parameters of a communicative encounter, such as relative social distance between interlocutors, institutional roles, and respective rights and obligations, the degree of imposition involved in a particular speech act, and variables such as the degree of familiarity between interlocutors, sex, and age (Kasper and Rose 2002).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.010 Published online by Cambridge University Press

209

210

SOPHIA MARMARIDOU

The usefulness of the pragmalinguists/sociopragmatics distinction in L2 teaching contexts is not paralleled by that of L2 testing, given that it is often difficult to evaluate whether a learner’s error reflects pragmalinguistic or sociopragmatic failure (McNamara and Roever 2006: 55). For example, the absence of politeness markers from a learner’s utterance might reflect pragmalinguistic weakness, if the learner does not know the specific markers, or sociopragmatic deficit if she is not aware that they should be used in a particular circumstance. Moreover, L2 tests do not seem to establish context in a way that authentic communication does in the real world, nor do they represent the speaker’s or the addressee’s actual face needs in real terms while they restrict the number of contextual cues that would be available in a real encounter. In view of difficulties in teasing apart L2 learners’ sociopragmatic from pragmalinguistic competence, attempts have shifted to establishing the priority of sociopragmatic development over pragmalinguistic development, its correlations with overall L2 proficiency, and the context of L2 learning itself. Chang’s (2011) study on interlanguage pragmatic development indicates that the relation between pragmalinguistic competence and sociopragmatic competence is a complex and interwoven one rather than a simple, linear ‘‘whichprecedes-which’’ kind of relation. Overall L2 proficiency levels also play a role in pragmatic development, but awareness of sociopragmatic parameters in communication is not always paired with appropriate pragmalinguistic resources. For example, a student may be aware of the social distance with a teacher but may use an inappropriate formula in apologizing (e.g., “Pardon me . . .”). Evidently, insufficient knowledge of the linguistic form–pragmatic force relationship (pragmalinguistics) may bring about an inappropriate demonstration of sociopragmatic competence. Apart from L2 proficiency, duration of study abroad seems to impact the acquisition of sociopragmatic variation patterns. Expectedly, while student mobility was found to be beneficial for the development of learners’ sociopragmatic competence, it was also evident that it is not the context per se that promoted learning, but also the nature of the interactions, the quality of the experiences, and the overall effort made to use the L2 (Devlin 2019). A shift of L2 research away from the appropriate use of speech act forms in face-to-face interaction with native speakers of the language has led to a different perspective on sociopragmatic context as emerging in the field of intercultural pragmatics and the development of learners’ intercultural communicative competence. Intercultural pragmatics is concerned with instances of communication between speakers with different first languages and usually representing different cultures, who communicate in a common language (Kecskes 2012). In this perspective, “individual prior experience and actual situational experience conditioned by socio-cultural factors are equally important in meaning construction and comprehension” (Kecskes 2012: 608). It follows that intercultural pragmatics embraces both a sociocultural view of L2 development and a subjective, experiential understanding of this

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.010 Published online by Cambridge University Press

9 Sociopragmatics and Context

process. On this analysis, context is both a societal construct consisting of the social conditions affecting intercultural communication and therefore mainly static and objective, and a subjective one in that it is perceived by individual speakers who process objective societal factors on the basis of their prior experience, linguistic, nonlinguistic, affective, etc. Investigating the subjective dimensions of intercultural communication, Chang and Haugh (2017) show that L2 learners’ attitudes affect the behavior of L2 learners, while their experiences take precedence over the current situational context in developing knowledge of the L2 and its use. This shift of emphasis away from given sociocultural aspects of context and toward attitudinal effects on interaction has brought forward aspects of meaning associated with metaphor, irony, humor, and interjections or prosodic markers. To the extent that such “non-propositional” aspects of meaning affect interlocutors’ understanding of each other as situated in a social context, or their understanding of societal attitudes promoted in a text, they are said to be sociopragmatic par excellence. Within this framework, Ifantidou (2019) found that in opinion articles from broadsheet British and US newspapers, L2 learners understood metaphor correctly regardless of the number of unknown words they encountered. It was also found that experiment participants relied less on contextual linguistic cues and more on personal experience in inferring the meaning of metaphorical expressions which included unknown words. Given that metaphorical sentences activate brain regions associated with emotion processing more strongly than their literal counterparts (Citron and Goldberg 2014), it is not surprising that L2 learners prefer metaphors over other linguistic stimuli. What is significant in this type of research is that, apart from a shift from a given sociocultural context to attitudinal aspects of communication, there is a parallel shift from face-to-face interaction to aspects of text understanding. Apparently, texts, such as opinion articles in newspapers, are generally experienced as artifacts known to represent, maintain, and create diverse positions and values, while tapping on emotions and triggering reader reactions. As such, they are likely to create expectations in the L2 readers’ minds that may be said to facilitate understanding. In this sense metaphor understanding is both inference-based and socially situated. Knowledge of face-to-face conventions of appropriateness and societal norms appears to be paralleled by knowledge of textual convention of sociocultural artifacts. Such knowledge, comprising speakers’, and writers’, cognitive context, seems to play a significant role in the analysis of texts within the framework of historical sociopragmatics, as will be shown in the next section.

9.4 Historical Sociopragmatics The cognitive view of context as comprising knowledge of textual convention is observed in historical sociopragmatics focusing on language data in written form, even when oral communication is represented. More specifically,

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.010 Published online by Cambridge University Press

211

212

SOPHIA MARMARIDOU

historical sociopragmatics investigates language use in its situational, local context and the ways in which situational contexts generate norms which interlocutors employ or exploit for pragmatic purposes. In fact, Culpeper (2009) identifies three levels of context against which texts may be understood: the most local, immediate text and co-text of interlocutors, the medial level of social situation (e.g., speech events, activity types, frames), par excellence the domain of sociopragmatics in the author’s view, and the most general level referring to national and regional cultures, institutional cultures, etc. From a theoretical point of view, sociopragmatic context seems to be reflected in the textual categories adopted in annotating available historical corpora (e.g., the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts). These categories refer to written genres, including essays, fiction, personal letters, and manuals for good behavior, but also to speech-based genres, including dialogues from plays and fiction, court proceedings, political debates, public speeches, and sermons (Jacobs and Jucker 1995). From an analytic point of view, the examination of the data indicates that interlocutors, in communicating their intentions, are aware of both social and textual convention and exploit such convention to achieve their purposes. For example, Fitzmaurice (2009) focuses on the sociopragmatic construction of implicature and inference in the illicit courtship correspondence between Edward Wortley and Mary Pierrepont. The communicative practices employed by the correspondents are shown to be embedded in the local context comprising the activity type (Levinson (1992) and social ritual they engage in, namely courting through correspondence. On such evidence, it can be argued that in sociopragmatic analysis all aspects of context are necessarily present: linguistic context or co-text, social context comprising social roles, values and norms, and cognitive context comprising knowledge of such norms and values that are followed or challenged in using language toward achieving specific purposes. Prioritizing context in the analysis of historical texts, Archer and Culpeper (2009) introduce the term sociophilology to refer to the study of the ways in which historical contexts, including the co-text, genre, social situation, and/or culture, shape the functions and forms of language as used within these contexts. In this approach, context is the investigative starting point, rather than language form or interactive function, while corpus linguistic techniques are pivotal in this enterprise (Archer 2017). Evidently, “sociophilology shares with sociopragmatics a fundamental interest in ‘local’ conditions of language use” (Archer and Culpeper 2009: 288). Using the Sociopragmatic Corpus, a subsection of the Corpus of English Dialogues: 1560–1760, the authors examine two genres, those of drama and trial proceedings, to analyze the speech of dyads such as master/mistress with servant and examiner with examinee respectively, using key parts of speech and key semantic fields that are statistically characteristic of these genres. They show that their method captures asymmetrical power relations that seem to be stereotypical of these particular genres at the time.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.010 Published online by Cambridge University Press

9 Sociopragmatics and Context

Apparently, the significance of historical sociopragmatic research in approaching sociopragmatic context lies in the fact that, on the one hand, it broadens its scope by relating it to genre and, on the other, it brings out the significance of language, and lexis in particular, in revealing aspects of context, thereby transgressing Leech’s definition of sociopragmatic context as providing “a link between micro, more linguistically-oriented considerations (the typical focus of pragmalinguistics), and the macro, more sociologically-oriented considerations” (Culpeper 2009: 181). Such considerations necessitate a closer look on the concept of genre in relation to context, and what possibilities genre affords for pragmatic analysis, especially as regards the two strands that have been associated with it, namely pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics.

9.5 Genre as Context: The Constructional Perspective While, as already mentioned, the sociopragmatics/pragmalinguistics distinction was initially introduced to elaborate on Leech’s (1983) General Pragmatics program, a wider conception of pragmatics as a “general cognitive, social, and cultural perspective on linguistic phenomena in relation to their usage in forms of behaviour” (Verschueren 1999: 7), often referred to as a “broad view” of pragmatics (Culpeper 2021), makes the distinction between sociopragmatics and pragmalinguistics a matter of research focus (Marmaridou 2011; Archer 2017) rather than two distinct subfields of pragmatics. At the same time, this latter view of pragmatics seems to reflect the concept of context as a cognitive, social/sociocultural, and linguistic construct respectively. Linguistic context is functionally equivalent to co-text and constitutes the first overt and verifiable connection between speaker and addressee (Romero-Trillo and Maguire 2011). Social context, and sociocultural context in particular, includes extralinguistic aspects of communication such as the interlocutors, physical surroundings such as time and location, and institutional and noninstitutional domains, while cognitive context frames content and is the foundation on which inference and other forms of reasoning are based (Fetzer 2011: 35). Moreover, contextualization cues, such as intonation patterns, various discourse markers, or forms of code-switching (Verschueren 2021: 127) enable interlocutors to adapt their frame of mind to incoming information toward reshaping their cognitive expectations (Romero-Trillo 2007) so that context can in fact be characterized as flexible and dynamic. While such distinctions have long been maintained in pragmatic research, not enough attention has been paid to the fact that contextual parameters of communication are systematically encoded in language, constitute aspects of the speaker’s knowledge of language, and affect inferencing. As Kecskes (2012) points out, the use of particular linguistic expressions is equally important as sociopragmatic context in inferential communication. Embracing an encyclopedic, and hence sociocultural, view of the lexicon, he points out that focus on

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.010 Published online by Cambridge University Press

213

214

SOPHIA MARMARIDOU

prior experience with language brings the cognitive component of context into focus. For example, if, upon an invitation for a drink, a speaker refuses by saying “Sorry, I can’t. My doctor won’t let me,” his interlocutor’s reply “What’s wrong with you?” implies an interest in the first speaker’s health (Kecskes 2012: 606). If, however, the response to the same invitation is “Sorry, I can’t. My mother-in-law won’t let me,” the same reply by the interlocutor implies a criticism of the speaker’s character, crucially depending on the sociocultural stereotype activated by the word “mother-in-law” in the particular situation, which is deeply conventionalized and cognitively salient. In fact, such observations cast doubt on the generality of inferencing. As Terkourafi (2021: 45) claims, sociopragmatics, especially concerned with discourse and physical context, as well as background knowledge, contributes to the study of inference and implicature by actually questioning their generality. Evidently, sociocultural context is not added to linguistic input to lead to appropriate inferences concerning the speech act performed. Rather, context is already linguistic at the onset of communication. This idea is specifically explored in Terkourafi (2009), who argues that there is strong interdependence between co-text and context in that linguistic cotext already “contains” extralinguistic context. The author takes issue with utterances from Cypriot Greek realizing offers or requests. She notes that while there is a general construction realizing requests, there are other lexically specific constructions that are preferred in specific contexts. For example, in transactional settings, where the speaker is asking the shop assistant for the availability of a particular product, (e.g., “is there . . .,” “do you have . . .”), the verb exo (have) in third-person singular (eçi) is preferred by working-class speakers, while second-person plural (eçete) is preferred by middle-class speakers. In interview settings, though, in addressing a request to the middleclass interviewer, the middle-class interviewee uses the construction θa iθela (I would like to + VP). In spite of the possibility of using the latter construction in transactional settings, too, frequency counts indicate a preponderance of each construction for the respective settings. Among the contextual parameters involved, the social class of speaker and addressee, their relationship, and the physical setting, comprise different parameters whose values identify a minimal context in each case, to the effect that different minimal contexts correlate positively with different linguistic constructions. Terkourafi claims that these parameters are fixed on the basis of background knowledge, or even perceptually, prior to the onset of communication, which then proceeds in parallel with the utterance. In this sense, a minimal context constitutes a convenient shorthand for an accumulated body of sociocultural knowledge against a background that on the one hand “colors” minimal context and, on the other is presupposed by it. So illocutionary force assignment proceeds on the basis of two types of contextual information. One pertaining to sociocultural categories of a minimal context available at speech onset and serving to set up expectations about the intended illocutionary force; and the other comprising paralinguistic and intonational cues while speech unfolds, and

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.010 Published online by Cambridge University Press

9 Sociopragmatics and Context

serving to confirm or revise the projected illocutionary force. Apart from the obvious advantage of Terkourafi’s analysis to associate lexically specific constructions with a more schematic construction of realizing requests, it advances a motivated assumption about the boundedness of sociopragmatic context in utterance understanding, crucially reflected in linguistic structure. As Terkourafi notes, “A potentially all-inclusive notion of context is practically unmanageable and of little empirical usefulness” (p. 36), while a minimal context appears to tap on routine ways of interacting with the social environment. Apparently, the concept of minimal context refers to the conventionalization of a relationship holding between utterances and contexts in one’s experience on the basis of frequency of occurrence. Along the same lines, Moser and Panaretou (2011) examine the speech act of “ruling,” i.e., setting a rule and delineating the consequences of breaking this rule, in two different contexts, i.e., in law texts and in the everyday discourse of a mother to her children. In particular, the authors focus on the grammatical categories of tense, aspect, and modality and find that their use in law texts deviates from everyday use. Using questionnaires and interviews to elicit native speakers’ judgments on law texts and everyday uses, and subjecting their data to qualitative analysis, the authors find that, while certain uses are unanimously judged ungrammatical in everyday contexts, they go completely unnoticed in law texts. On the basis of such evidence, they point out that what licenses the observed “deviant” uses is the genre of law texts rather than the speech act performed therein. They argue that the genre of law, as a form of highly institutionalized meso-context embedded in the wider sociocultural context, sets up a cognitive frame which imposes interpretations to grammatical forms that would be unacceptable in other contexts. They conclude that genre is a bridging notion, connecting the macro-sociocultural context with the micro-context of laws. The above studies make a case for systematically correlating contextual specifications with linguistic form in particular genres. In very broad terms, the concept of genre emerges as a relation of language to context (Corbett 2006) and, as such, it is reminiscent of Leech’s (1983) “middle” level of analysis that Culpeper (2009) identified with genre. Admittedly, linguistic regularities play an important role in genres; what is more, genres have been viewed as cognitive constructs, “recognized, maintained and employed by members of a given discourse community” (Stukker et al. 2016: 9). In exploring the conventional language of Greek folk tales, Nikiforidou (2016) views genre as a frame “creating conventional expectations in the choice and interpretation of lexis and grammar with particular roles and structure in the frame indexed by particular linguistic choices” (p. 345). Similarly, in analyzing poetic discourse, Piata (2016) considers genre as a schema, i.e., as “a mental representation shared among language users and guiding language production and comprehension” (p. 225). The issue of the correlation of linguistic form and meaning with contextual parameters of a speech event or genre has been systematically taken up within the framework of usage-based Construction Grammar. In this

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.010 Published online by Cambridge University Press

215

216

SOPHIA MARMARIDOU

approach, language, and knowledge of language, consists of a structured inventory of constructions, i.e., form–meaning pairings, at various levels of schematicity, and encompassing all linguistic levels, from morphemes through the lexicon (including idiomatic characterizations) to the various patterns of syntactic structure associated with corresponding semantic, pragmatic, and discourse patterns. In this framework the construction, the basic unit of linguistic communication, is also the basic mental unit for genre information and is part of a speaker’s knowledge space. More specifically, constructional approaches to genre model genre knowledge in terms of genre-based constructions, whose pragmatic specifications include their association with a particular sociocultural context (Nikiforidou 2018: 543). While this model seems well suited to the investigation of conventional aspects of discourse, it is relatively recently that specific patterns have been associated with particular genres, viewed as institutionalized contexts and definable in sociocultural terms. Perhaps one of the earliest attempts in this direction is Östman (2005), who claims that much of discourse is conventionalized and that acceptability and conventionality are relative to context (p. 126). Adopting a frame-semantics perspective, he observes that there are discourse-level frames that can be viewed as genres, the latter indicating how we know that what we say is appropriate in a particular setting.1 These frames for understanding are what he calls discourse patterns. Notably, he shows that recipes, for example, constitute such a discourse pattern, including the ingredients section, followed by the cooking instructions, in a specific outline, or graphic display, that is part of this discourse-level categorization. Newspaper headlines are another case in point, characterized by determiner omission, which is not otherwise acceptable. For example, “Mother drowns baby” is a pattern licensed by the particular genre, rather than any of the “core” constructions like the Determination construction, the Subject-Predicate construction and the Verb Phrase construction, which together would license constructs like “A mother drowned a baby.” However, there are restrictions as to the application of the headlines template. For example, “Emelda likes vase” is not licensed in this context. Apparently, Östman (2005: 123) observes, in headlines only a human agent as subject and an animate patient as object are acceptable without articles or other determiners.2 In their constructional account of genre-based argument omissions, Ruppenhofer and Michaelis (2010) identify the dimensions of genre that are conventionally associated with the use of null arguments, as in product label statements, e.g., “Ø Contains alcohol,” in which the null argument is associated with the subject role.3 They argue that such omissions are constructional 1

2

3

In fact, for Östman (2005: 132), the notion of discourse pattern is a filter mediating between genre and text-type descriptions, i.e., discourse patterns are conventionalized associations between text type and genre. In fact, the animate object may be recovered through a part-for-whole metonymy, as in “Sewage plant worker finds arm in plant” (from Ruppenhofer and Michaelis 2010: 166). Other instances of genre-based argument omission discussed by the authors include recipes, as in “Blend all the ingredients in an electric blender. Serve Ø cold,” or diary style, as in “Ø read Michelet; Ø wrote to Desmond . . . ; Ø played gramophone . . .,” among others.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.010 Published online by Cambridge University Press

9 Sociopragmatics and Context

relative to a genre, rather than predicational/lexical (as in “I understand Ø” [what you’re saying]), or as a result of a syntactic role, such as by-phrase agents, as in “The arrow was found Ø near a tree.” In this analysis, genres enable omissions that the predicator or construction would not otherwise permit, as in “*I avoid cocktails because Ø contain alcohol.” Moreover, genresensitive argument omissions are constrained by particular specifications. For example, anaphoricity is possible only under specific restrictions, as when the relevant genre presupposes the salience of certain entities. This is the case with labelese (product labels), which, as an indexical genre, features inherently selfreferential predications. Omission is also possible in diaries because it is possible to track the “missing” referent, as in “Ø read Michelet; Ø wrote to Desmond . . . ; Ø played gramophone . . . .” The same holds for recipes, as in “Blend all the ingredients . . . Ø Serve cold.” While genre-based omissions are not obligatory, in the sense that non-omission of arguments does not lead to ungrammaticality, they nevertheless invoke the particular text type. In this sense genres are not independent of the omission involved. Rather, they are, at least partly, constituted by the practice of omission, along with other lexicogrammatical choices. Interestingly, genre-based argument omissions are often associated with what is canonical in the genre. For example, in labelese, argument omission is allowed only for statements describing “the provenance, constitution, qualities or efficacy of the product” (Ruppenhofer and Michaelis 2010: 169). So, while “Ø contains no hydrogenated oils” or “Ø creates visibly fuller, thicker hair” are acceptable, “Ø has flourished in cultivation for over 5,000 years” on a product box is not. Apparently, what is canonical in each case is sensitive to socioculturally determined practices, or sociopragmatic context. In a study aiming to establish the conventional links of context to grammatical form, Nikiforidou (2021) focuses on the well-established and clearly delimited genre of stage directions, as, for example “Enter Violet” or “Exit Marianne,” taking the standard form [Enter – NPsubject]. The expressions licensed by this pattern “function as genre markers in the sense that their presence uniquely and unequivocally evokes a theater play setting” (p. 191). Although such expressions are formulaic, they are not totally fixed. Rather, they exhibit some flexibility in the verb slot, as well as the subject. For example, while “enter” can be used for subjects in the singular or plural (“Enter Camilla . . . and King Charles III”), “exit” is typically used for a singular subject. Following the Latin verb paradigm, plural post-posed subjects require the third-person plural verb suffix, i.e., “exeunt,” as in “Exeunt Newman and Mme. De Cintre, right.” While lexical variability for “enter” is limited to the prefixation with “re-,” as in “Re-enter Alan,” the subject slot can be occupied by all kinds of NPs ranging from proper names to heavily modified nouns, as in “Enter Lear in a chair carried by Servants.” However, the post-posed subject construction cannot feature pronouns in the subject position. This accords with the function of the construction, which is to provide hearer(reader)-new focal information, i.e., which characters are to appear in the next scene. While this construction can be described as semi-substantive, it does relate formally

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.010 Published online by Cambridge University Press

217

218

SOPHIA MARMARIDOU

and functionally to other constructions in the language, such as Lakoff’s (1987) central deictic (e.g., “There goes Harry with his red sneakers on”), which draws on the “pointing-out” idealized cognitive model, whereby the speaker aims to focus the hearer’s attention on the referent of the post-posed NP, which is in her visual field. As with the post-posed subject construction of stage directions, the deictic-there construction is incompatible with pronominal subjects for the same functional reason, i.e., both constructions draw the hearer’/reader’s attention to an individual about to appear on the scene of events. Such observations point to the functional motivation of the post-posed subject construction and its embeddedness in the rest of the grammar. Apart from formal and functional motivations for the [Enter – NPsubject] construction, there is a set of semantically characterizable words which appear frequently and consistently in all plays, including modifiers of speech (e.g., narrative tone, with senile quaver), modifiers of expression or posture (e.g., smiling, distraught), and modifiers of actions (e.g., urgently, dramatically). The use of such lexis in stage directions is evidently motivated by genre requirements to the extent that these expressions, conventionally interpreted as instructions on speech and expression/posture, function as conventional genre markers, uniquely evoking the specific context.4 In focusing further on sentence-level constructions evoking particular discourse contexts, Antonopoulou et al. (2015: 303) show that there is a conventional link between specific forms and specific contexts in which these forms appear, to the extent that they become bearers of those discoursal properties, through frequent use and consequent entrenchment. They take issue with a particular instance of interaction, namely couple talk and make reference to the expression we need to talk as a phrase introducing the speaker’s proposal to his/her partner to break up their relationship. Notably, this is a truncated form, i.e., without the prepositional complements “to NP” or “about/of NP,” which qualifies as a separate construction characterized by a pragmatic point (Fillmore et al. 1988). In support of this analysis, the authors observe that the implicature associated with the construction is not readily available to propositionally equivalent expressions, e.g., we must talk; moreover, its form is fully fixed, in that it consists of the first-person plural pronoun subject, the modal need in present tense (only) and the infinitival complement to talk. To test the discourse-specific conventionality of the construction, and in the absence of discourse-specific corpora, the authors resort to the online Urban Dictionary (2011), where definitions are contributed by the users, posted, and approved or not with votes by other users whose number is recorded. The answers for the expression we need to talk are suggestive of a particular contextual meaning, while the fact that it is included as an expression is itself suggestive of its constructional, unit-like status. The above formal, lexical, and pragmatic specifications of the construction, along with speaker 4

As the author observes, regardless of whether the basic meaning of such a term refers more to speech or to expression/ posture, in practice, it is sometimes impossible to distinguish between the two (Nikiforidou 2021: 196).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.010 Published online by Cambridge University Press

9 Sociopragmatics and Context

judgments and dictionary evidence, point to its status as a substantive idiom in the language which functions as a marker of the particular type of interaction, i.e., couple talk. So far, it has been pointed out that genre, as a complex knowledge schema that individual language users have at their disposal to engage in discourse, and as the “middle” level on which sociopragmatic context resides, is conventionally associated with particular constructions to the extent that such constructions may in fact function as markers for the particular discourse. However, as has been pointed out by several scholars (e.g., Antonopoulou and Nikiforidou 2011; Diewald 2015; Fischer 2015), not all contextual information (e.g., as in genres) should be directly associated with specific constructions. A criterion for the systematicity of associating discourse-sensitive contextual information with a particular construction is transferability, which indicates the degree of entrenchment and conventionalization of a linguistic form for a particular discourse setting. As Antonopoulou et al. (2015) have shown, transferability is often associated with a humorous effect in discourse. Examples are provided from the humorous exploitation of classroom discourse, the discoursal frame of the Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), the scholarly edition, horoscopes, and couple talk. The authors systematically show how conventional discoursal patterns coming from a specific genre are exploited in a different one, so as to create a humorous effect. The humorous, or other, exploitation of a construction associated with particular discourse contexts has also become apparent in Greek TV shows (Marmaridou, forthcoming). What is perhaps significant in this case is that the construction humorously transfers to other TV programs, develops formal variation, and is consistently spreading in other discourses. More specifically, in the last few years, TV shows in Greece feature contests in various domains of experience, such as fashion and styling, modeling, cooking, dancing, singing, and performing, among others. The structure of these contests is very similar. There is a committee of three to four judges who, after signaling out the final list of contestants, require of them to perform several tasks. As a result of their performance in each one of them, the number of contestants weekly diminishes, until the last three or four enter the final phase that will provide the winner. Notably, the judges’ verdict on each contestant’s performance is often expressed by a simple affirmative or negative expression of the form apo mena (ine) ne/oçi (“from me (is) yes/no” – “from me (it is) yes/no”).5 Expectedly, search in two Greek language corpora, also representing oral discourse, does not yield this expression. Direct observation and search on YouTube have shown that this pattern is functionally motivated and has constructional status, in that it qualifies as a substantive idiom, inheriting formal and semantic properties from more general constructions in the language, while also exhibiting its distinctive properties, crucially including its systematic association with the “TV contest show” discourse, as already mentioned. 5

This pattern was initially observed in the 2019 show Greece’s Next Top Model and was subsequently taken up by other contests of a similar orientation.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.010 Published online by Cambridge University Press

219

220

SOPHIA MARMARIDOU

As with the humorous exploitation of other discourse-specific constructions, the occurrence of this construction in different contexts, albeit featuring formal or lexical variation, evokes the popular TV contest shows genre in a humorous, if not critical, manner. For example, in announcing recent news of the development of a Russian vaccine, the host of a humorous TV show exclaimed “apo mas ine da” (from us is yes), “from us it is yes (in Russian)” to show approval of this achievement. In this case, the variation not only affects the personal pronoun, which now features in the plural, but also the language in which the affirmative is glossed to metonymically stand for the origin of the vaccine. The transferability of this idiom in discourse is further exemplified by its humorous exploitation in an email thread between colleagues making arrangements for the dates of their leave of absence from the office during the summer vacation. When a final plan is reached with each member’s preferences, the Director of Studies indicates agreement by “apo mena ine ne” (from me is yes).6 Notably, the agreement of two further members of staff is expressed by adopting the same idiom, enriched by typical phrases enacting corresponding practices: (in translation) “And from me yes. Congratulations, you pass to the next phase,” and “And from me yes, but I press the golden buzzer, too, and we all go straight to the finals!” respectively. Significantly, the latter two utterances are followed by smiley and winking emoticons underlining the humorous effect. Clearly, the perlocutionary effect of this construction, i.e., the contestants’ remaining – or not – in the contest, does not apply to its humorous uses. What is significant for the purposes of the present chapter is that the sociopragmatic parameters of a communicative event, such as a TV contest show, are systematically associated with a particular construction, so that the construction evokes the particular discourse context.

9.6 Concluding Remarks As already mentioned, in their joint attempt to constrain the field of pragmatics, Leech (1983) and Thomas (1983) introduced the concept of sociopragmatics (as distinct from pragmalinguistics) to refer to more specific, “local” conditions on language use, which were subsequently associated with corresponding parameters of the interactional context of communicative acts. These typically refer to the relative status of interlocutors, institutional roles, and the (in) formality of the situation, within perceptions of a cultural norm. The linguistic means available to interlocutors to respond to sociopragmatic requirements were the object of pragmalinguistic study. In subsequent construals of context as linguistic (co-text), social, and cognitive (commonly frame- or schema-based and inference-creating), sociopragmatics was essentially viewed as a set of 6

I gratefully acknowledge the purposeful initiation of this thread to V. Geka, as well as the recording of the responses of the unsuspecting subjects.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.010 Published online by Cambridge University Press

9 Sociopragmatics and Context

contextual features readily associated with specific discourse patterns, activity types or genres. Especially in the framework of Construction Grammar, where contextual specifications are routinely incorporated in the description of grammatical constructions, genres are characterized by specific constructional reflexes of sociopragmatic context which are available to speakers of the language as knowledge schemas, i.e., as part of a speaker’s knowledge of the language, or a speaker’s repertoire of genres. In this analysis, the distinction between sociopragmatics and pragmalinguistics is less pronounced than it initially was, while sociopragmatic context is often shown to be systematically encoded in particular discourse constructions. Obviously, this is not to deny the dynamicity of communication. In fact, genres themselves, initially considered static and well entrenched, have been shown themselves to be dynamic, changing, remediated, overlapping, or fluid, as, for example, is the case with instances of computer-mediated communication (Herring et al. 2013: 10). However, there is ample evidence that genres systematically feature conventional and highly entrenched constructions that function as markers for the particular genres, are recognizable as such by speakers of the language, and are hence exploitable for humorous or other effects. In this context, a challenge facing future research on genre constructions, especially within a usage-based model, such as Construction Grammar, is their identification and frequency of occurrence within particular genres. Evidently, this calls for the compilation of specialized corpora that will provide clearer insights into the actual usage of such constructions, which might otherwise go unnoticed in general corpora. To the extent that genres comprise Leech’s local conditions of language use and incorporate aspects of sociopragmatic context as reflected in particular constructions, work toward discourse specific corpora seems well justified.

References Antonopoulou, E., and Nikiforidou, K. (2011). Construction grammar and conventional discourse: A construction-based approach to discoursal incongruity. Journal of Pragmatics, 43(10), 2594–2609. Antonopoulou, E., Nikiforidou, K., and Tsakona, V. (2015). Construction grammar and discoursal incongruity. In G. Brône, K. Feyaerts and T. Veale, eds., Cognitive Linguistics Meets Humor Research: Current trends and new developments. Berlin/ New York: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 289–314. Archer, D. (2017). Context and historical (socio-)pragmatics 20 years on. Journal of Historical Pragmatics, 18(2), 315–336. Archer, D., and Culpeper, J. (2009). Identifying key sociophilological usage in plays and trial proceedings (1640–1760): An empirical approach via corpus annotation. Journal of Historical Pragmatics, 10(2), 286–309. Austin, J. L. (1962). How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Chang, Y.-F. (2011). Interlanguage pragmatic development: The relation between pragmalinguistic competence and sociopragmatic competence. Language Sciences, 33(5), 786–798.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.010 Published online by Cambridge University Press

221

222

SOPHIA MARMARIDOU

Chang, W.-L. M., and Haugh, M. (2017). Intercultural communicative competence and emotion among second language learners of Chinese. In I. Kecskes and C. Sun (eds.), Key Issues in Chinese as a Second Language Research (pp. 267–286). New York: Routledge. Citron, F., and Goldberg, A. (2014). Metaphorical sentences are more emotionally engaging than their literal counterparts. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 26(11), 2585–2595. Corbett, J. (2006). Genre and genre analysis. In K. Brown (ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (pp. 26–32). Boston: Elsevier. Devlin, A. M. (2019). The interaction between duration of study abroad, diversity of loci of learning and sociopragmatic variation patterns: A comparative study. Journal of Pragmatics, 146, 121–136. Diewald, G. (2015) Modal particles in different communicative types. Constructions and Frames, 7(2), 218–257. Fetzer, A. (2011). Pragmatics as a linguistic concept. In W. Bublitz and N. R. Norrick (eds.), Foundations of Pragmatics (pp. 23–50). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Fillmore, Ch., Kay, P., and O’Connor, M. C. (1988). Regularity and idiomaticity in grammatical constructions: The case of let alone. Language, 64(3), 501–538. Fischer, K. (2015). Situation in grammar or in frames? Evidence from the so-called baby talk register. Constructions and Frames, 7(2), 258–288. Fitzmaurice, S. M. (2009). The sociopragmatics of a lovers’ spat: The case of the eighteenth-century courtship letters of Mary Pierrepont and Edward Wortley. Journal of Historical Pragmatics, 10(2), 215–237. Fried, M., and Östman, J.-O. (2004). Construction Grammar: A thumbnail sketch. In Μ. Fried and J.-O. Östman (eds.), Construction Grammar in a Cross-Language Perspective (pp. 11–86). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Grice, P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole and J. Morgan (eds.), Syntax and Semantics, Vol. IX: Pragmatics (pp. 113–128). New York: Academic Press. Herring, S. C., Stein, D., and Virtanen, T. (2013). Introduction to the pragmatics of computer-mediated communication. In S. C. Herring, D. Stein, and T. Virtanen (eds.), Handbook of Pragmatics of Computer-Mediated Communication (pp. 3–31). Berlin: Mouton. Ifantidou, E. (2019). Relevance and metaphor understanding in a second language. In K. Scott, B. Clark, and R. Carston (eds.), Relevance: Pragmatics and Interpretation (pp. 218–30). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jacobs, A., and Jucker, A. H. (1995). The historical perspective in pragmatics. In A. H. Jucker (ed.), Historical Pragmatics: Pragmatic Developments in the History of English (pp. 3–33). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Jucker, A. H. (2006). Historical pragmatics. In Östman, J.-O. and J. Verschueren (eds.), Handbook of Pragmatics 2006 (pp. 1–14). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Kasper, G., and Rose, K. (2002). Pragmatic Development in a Second Language. Oxford: Blackwell. Kecskes, I. (2012). Sociopragmatics and cross-cultural and intercultural studies. In K. Allan and K. M. Jaszczolt (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Pragmatics (pp. 599–616). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lakoff, G. (1987). Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind (pp. 462–585). Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press. Leech, G. N. (1983). Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.010 Published online by Cambridge University Press

9 Sociopragmatics and Context

Levinson, S. N. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Levinson, S. N. (1992). Activity types and language. In Drew P. and J. Heritage (eds.), Talk at Work (pp. 66–100). The Hague: Mouton. Marmaridou, S. (2000). Pragmatic Meaning and Cognition. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Marmaridou, S. (2011). Pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics. In W. Bublitz, and N. R. Norrick (eds.), Foundations of Pragmatics (pp. 77–106). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Marmaridou, S. (forthcoming). Re-cycling discourse constructions: The case of [apo NPAcc. (ine3rd p. sing.) ne/oçi] in Greek TV shows. McNamara, T., and Roever, C. (2006). The social dimension of proficiency: How testable is it? Language Learning, 56(2): 43–79. Morris, Ch. W. (1938). Foundations of the Theory of Signs. In N. O. R. Carnap and C. W. Morris (eds.), International Encyclopaedia of Unified Science (Vol. I, pp. 77–138). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Moser, A., and Panaretou, E. (2011). Why a mother’s rule is not a law: The role of context in the interpretation of Greek laws. In A. Fetzer and E. Oishi (eds.), Context and Contexts (pp. 11–40). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Nikiforidou, K. (2016). “Genre knowledge” in a constructional framework: Lexis, grammar and perspective in folk tales. In N. Stukker, W. Spooren, and G. Steen (eds.), Genre in Language, Discourse and Cognition (pp. 331–360). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Nikiforidou, K. (2018). Genre and constructional analysis. Pragmatics and Cognition, 25(3), 543–575. Nikiforidou, K. (2021). Grammatical variability and the grammar of genre: Constructions, conventionality, and motivation in “stage directions.” Special issue of Journal of Pragmatics (eds. Y. Matsumoto and S. Iwasaki), Multiplicity in Grammar: Modes, Genres and Speaker’s Knowledge, 173, 189–199. Östman, J.-O. (2005). Construction discourse: A prolegomenon. In J.-O. Östman and M. Fried (eds.), Construction Grammars: Cognitive Grounding and Theoretical Extensions (pp. 121–144). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Piata, A. (2016). Genre “out of the box”: A conceptual integration analysis of poetic discourse. In N. Stukker, W. Spooren, and G. Steen (eds.), Genre in Language, Discourse and Cognition (pp. 225–250). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Romero-Trillo, J. (2007). Adaptive Management in discourse: The case of involvement discourse markers in English and Spanish conversations. Catalan Journal of Linguistics, 6(1), 81–94. Romero-Trillo, J., and Maguire, L. (2011). Adaptive context: The fourth element of meaning. International Review of Pragmatics, 3(2), 228–241. Rose, K. R. (2000). An exploratory cross-sectional study of interlanguage pragmatic development. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 22(1), 27–67. Ruppenhofer, J., and Michaelis, L. (2010). A constructional account of genre-based argument omissions. Constructions and Frames, 2(2), 158–184. Searle, J. R. (1975). Indirect speech acts. In P. Cole, P. and J. Morgan (eds.), Syntax and Semantics, Vol. III: Speech Acts (pp. 59–82). New York: Academic Press. Stukker, N., Spooren, W., and Steen, G. (2016). Introduction. In N. Stukker, W. Spooren, and G. Steen (eds.), Genre in Language, Discourse and Cognition (pp. 1–14). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.010 Published online by Cambridge University Press

223

224

SOPHIA MARMARIDOU

Terkourafi, M. (2009). On de-limiting context. In A. Bergs and G. Diewald (eds.), Contexts and Constructions (pp. 17–42). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Terkourafi, M. (2021). Inference and Implicature. In M. Haugh, D. Z. Kadar, and M. Terkourafi (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics (pp. 30–47). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thomas, J. A. (1983). Cross-cultural pragmatic failure. Applied Linguistics, 4(2), 91–112. Verschueren, J. (1999). Understanding Pragmatics. London: Hodder Arnold. Verschueren, J. (2021). Reflexivity and meta-awareness. In M. Haugh, D. Z. Kadar, and M. Terkourafi (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics (pp. 117–139). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.010 Published online by Cambridge University Press

10 Natural Semantic Metalanguage and Context Anna Gladkova 10.1 Introduction Natural language is a human-specific symbolic system for expressing meaning. Meaning is embodied at the level of each linguistic element, as well as through combinations of elements. When meaning is considered in combination with other meanings, we name it context. The Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) is an approach to studying linguistic meaning in isolation, as well as in context. Context can be considered broadly here and includes the syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations of a word, as well as the social and cultural contexts it functions in. Therefore, when it comes to interpreting linguistic meaning in context, NSM is a unique semantic approach which can analyze and describe meaning and its functions in various types of contexts.1 Anna Wierzbicka, the founder of the NSM approach, famously declared the centrality of meaning to be a linguistic function and emphasized that the study of language should be primarily conducted through the prism of meaning. Wierzbicka (1996: 3) wrote: To study language without reference to meaning is like studying road signs from the point of view of their physical properties (how much they weigh, what kind of paint are they painted with, and so on), or like studying the structure of the eye without any reference to seeing.

Wierzbicka started working on identifying language universals in the 1960s, and this research agenda led her to developing a versatile system of studying meaning. The chapter is structured as follows. Section 10.2 describes theoretical foundations of the NSM approach and its main concepts, such as semantic primitives, universal syntax, and semantic molecules. Section 10.3 demonstrates how NSM can be applied to studying “formal” linguistic context, in particular through studying lexical meaning and conceptual inter-connections I am grateful to Anna Wierzbicka and Cliff Goddard for their comments on this chapter. All errors remain mine. Other approaches which pay particular attention to meaning in context are the Moscow School of Semantics (Apresjan 1992) and Meaning-Text Theory (Mel’č uk 2016). The NSM framework shares many theoretical views and assumptions with these two approaches.

1

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.011 Published online by Cambridge University Press

226

ANNA GLADKOVA

and constructing semantic explications. Section 10.4 focuses on the aspects of cultural context in interpreting meaning, in particular the notions of cultural keywords, cultural influences in conceptualizations, and cultural scripts. Section 10.5 concludes with the description of recent NSM development, such as Minimal Language and its applications.

10.2 NSM: Basic Concepts 10.2.1 Semantic Primitives The NSM approach to studying meaning in natural language originated as a research program by Anna Wierzbicka in the 1960s. She was later joined by Cliff Goddard as well as other Australian and international scholars (Wierzbicka 2021a). The NSM approach relies on the hypothesis put forward by Leibniz (1956, [1678] 1987) that a set of concepts should exist that cannot be reduced further and need to be accepted as undefinable. Wierzbicka’s idea is that such concepts should also be present in every language. Therefore, a key unit of the NSM approach is a semantic primitive (or a prime) – a lexically encoded meaning which can be realized at the level of a word, or a bound lexeme, and cannot be defined further. Wierzbicka’s initial list of primes included fourteen words (1972). In the last decade, it has been proposed that the search for semantic primitives has reached its goal and is set at a total of sixty-five (see Table 10.1) (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2014; Goddard 2018a). The primitives have been identified by trial and error in the process of designing definitions of several lexical domains, primarily emotion terms, speech acts, and concrete vocabulary. The universality of NSM has been tested on a significant number (about three dozen) of related and unrelated languages (Goddard and Wierzbicka 1994, 2002; Peeters 2006; see Gladkova and Larina 2018 and the NSM Homepage for an overview). The primes include several thematic groups: substantives (e.g., I and YOU), evaluators (GOOD and BAD), mental predicates (KNOW, THINK, WANT, DON’T WANT, FEEL, SEE, HEAR), speech (SAY, WORDS, TRUE), actions, events, movement (DO, HAPPEN, MOVE), time (TIME~WHEN, NOW, BEFORE, AFTER, A LONG TIME, A SHORT TIME, FOR SOME TIME, MOMENT), space (PLACE~WHERE, HERE, ABOVE, BELOW, FAR, NEAR, SIDE, INSIDE, TOUCH), among others. The primes are anthropocentric and reflect essential qualities of human cognition and sociality. The exponents of primes can be realized at different levels across languages – words, bound morphemes, or phrasemes. Also, the same universal meaning can sometimes have several representations in a given language which are called allolexes. For example, in English other and else are allolexes of the prime OTHER, I and me are allolexes of the prime I. In some cases, a single word called portmanteau expresses a combination of primes – e.g., tak in Russian for LIKE and THIS.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.011 Published online by Cambridge University Press

10 Natural Semantic Metalanguage and Context

Table 10.1 Semantic primes, English exponents (after Goddard and Wierzbicka 2014) I, YOU, SOMEONE, SOMETHING~THING, PEOPLE, BODY

substantives

KINDS, HAVE PARTS

relational substantives

THIS, THE SAME, OTHER~ELSE

determiners

ONE, TWO, SOME, ALL, MUCH~MANY, LITTLE~FEW

quantifiers

GOOD, BAD

evaluators

BIG, SMALL

descriptors

KNOW, THINK, WANT, DON’T WANT, FEEL, SEE, HEAR

mental predicates

SAY, WORDS, TRUE

speech

DO, HAPPEN, MOVE

actions, events, movement

BE (SOMEWHERE), THERE IS, BE (SOMEONE/SOMETHING)

location, existence, specification

(IS) MINE

possession

LIVE, DIE

life and death

TIME~WHEN, NOW, BEFORE, AFTER, A LONG TIME, A SHORT TIME, FOR SOME TIME, MOMENT

time

PLACE~WHERE, HERE, ABOVE, BELOW, FAR, NEAR, SIDE, INSIDE, TOUCH

place

NOT, MAYBE, CAN, BECAUSE, IF

logical concepts

VERY, MORE

augmentor, intensifier

LIKE

similarity

Notes: • Exponents of primes can be polysemous, i.e., they can have other, additional meanings • Exponents of primes may be words, bound morphemes, or phrasemes • They can be formally complex • They can have language-specific combinatorial variants (allolexes, indicated with ~) • Each prime has well-specified syntactic (combinatorial) properties.

10.2.2 NSM Universal Syntax Empirical research has identified that certain syntactic properties of semantic universals are also universal. Such combinations are called canonical contexts. For example, the prime FEEL is used in the following combinations: someone feels something someone feels something good/bad someone feels something in a part of the body

At the same time, not all uses of a word with the universal meaning are shown to be universal. For example, the use to feel good/bad is not shown to be a universal use of the prime FEEL. This is so because in some languages (e.g., Russian), this meaning would be realized by a reflexive form – č uvstvovat’ sebja xorošo ‘feel oneself good.’ The use of the reflexive form brings in additional meaning to this syntactic use of to feel and excludes it from the list of universal contexts.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.011 Published online by Cambridge University Press

227

228

ANNA GLADKOVA

10.2.3 Semantic Molecules Empirical research conducted over time has indicated that certain concepts cannot be decomposed via semantic primitives only and require the use of more complex terms. In NSM, they are called semantic molecules (Goddard 2016). Semantic molecules are universal or near-universal meanings decomposable in terms of semantic primes (and sometimes other molecules) which are required in explications of certain concepts. Semantic molecules are often salient in demonstrating conceptual dependence. Wierzbicka (2015: 5–6) illustrates such a chain of dependency with the explications of legs, long, and hands: the explication of legs contains the molecule long, which in turn is explicated via hands, with the latter being explicated via semantic primes only: Explication [A] legs (someone’s legs) a) b) c) d) e)

two parts of someone’s body these two parts are below all the other parts of the body these two parts are long (m) these two parts of someone’s body can move as this someone wants because people’s bodies have these two parts, people can move in many places as they want

Explication [B] something long (e.g., a cucumber, a tail, a stick) a) when someone sees this thing, this someone can think about it like this: b) “two parts of this thing are not like any other parts because one of these two parts is very far from the other” c) if someone’s hands (m) touch this thing everywhere on all sides, this someone can think about it in the same way

Explication [C] hands (someone’s hands) a) b) c) d) e) f) g)

two parts of someone’s body they are parts of two other parts of two sides of this someone’s body these parts of someone’s body can move as this someone wants these parts of someone’s body have many parts these parts can move in many ways as this someone wants because people’s bodies have these parts, people can do many things with many things as they want because people’s bodies have these parts, people can touch many things as they want

Some molecules are hypothesized to be universal, while others are not. Goddard (2021) distinguishes universal, approximate, and culture-specific semantic molecules. Universal molecules include fundamental concepts from the immediate human environment found across languages and themselves constitute frequent building conceptual blocks e.g., hands, eyes, sun, sky, fire, water, children, men, women, long, round. Approximate molecules do not have full conceptual equivalence across languages. For example, “river” is a type of water flow found in different parts of the globe. “Rivers” differ depending on the environment, climate conditions, and terrain, and consequently, their conceptualization across languages have been shown not to be universal (Bromhead 2018). Lastly, there are

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.011 Published online by Cambridge University Press

10 Natural Semantic Metalanguage and Context

culture-specific molecules, which are significantly culture- and society-dependent (e.g., number, money, doctor, priest). Semantic molecules and semantic primes are salient in semantic conceptual construction, yet they vary in their linguistic status and “flavor.” Semantic primes can have different lexical status – words, bound morphemes, or phrasemes. Semantic molecules are more commonly separate lexemes. Simultaneously, their semantic “flavor” is richer and has broader semantic and cultural associations than semantic primes have.

10.3 NSM in the Analysis of Linguistic Meaning at a Conceptual Level 10.3.1 How to Construct a Semantic Explication The result of semantic analysis of a word is recorded in the form of a semantic explication. A semantic explication is a semantic formula written in semantic primes (or semantic primes and semantic molecules if required) which represents the semantic content of a lexeme. Several issues are at stake here: the issue of polysemy, conditions of creating a good semantic explication, and the issue of a semantic template (Goddard 2011). Goddard (2020: 96) identifies the criteria for a good semantic explication as follows: (a) it is phrased entirely in words and grammar of the NSM metalanguage; (b) it is coherent, i.e., makes sense as a whole; (c) it is compatible with the range of use of the word being explicated and with its relations with other words, entailments, frequent collocations, and so on; and (d) it satisfies native speaker intuitions about interpretation in context. The issue of identifying polysemy is also essential to the NSM-based semantic analysis. Explications worded in semantic primitives serve as a reliable test in identifying and confirming polysemy of a word. A word can be classified as having a single general meaning if its range of use can be covered by a single explication. On the contrary, a word can be classified polysemous (as having two or more meanings) if two or more related explications need to be proposed to cover its uses (Goddard 2000). Both issues of proposing and constructing an NSM explication and distinguishing a polysemy of a word will be demonstrated using the example of analysis of the word virus by Goddard and Wierzbicka (2021). Goddard and Wierzbicka (2021) explore the semantics of virus- and disease-related terminology which has become particularly prominent in the time of coronavirus pandemic. They posit the polysemy of the word with a core meaning and a recently emerging meaning due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Goddard and Wierzbicka emphasize that their definition represents a naïve worldview which does not fully coincide with the scientific understanding of the concept. The explication is constructed based on the linguistic evidence.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.011 Published online by Cambridge University Press

229

230

ANNA GLADKOVA

Virus1 is used in contexts like the following (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2021: 13): (1a) (1b) (1c) (1d)

I must’ve picked up a virus. Colds are caused by a virus. Howard is out of . . . [the] team after going down with a virus. It’s only a matter of time before such a virus adapts itself to spread more easily from person to person and causes a severe worldwide outbreak.

The core meaning is represented as follows (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2021: 4): Explication [D] virus1 (e.g., a virus) a) something of one kind, there are many kinds of things of this kind b) when there is something of this kind somewhere, there are many very very small things of this kind there, people can’t see them c) there can be many such things in people’s bodies at some times d) when there are many of these very very small things in someone’s body, a very short time after there can be many of them in the bodies of other people in the same place e) when they are in someone’s body, something bad can happen in this someone’s body because of it f) people can think about things of this kind like this: “these things do very bad things to people’s bodies”

The explication contains four main conceptual sections. Section (a) introduces virus1 as “something of one kind” with many subkinds, therefore underlying that there can be different viruses. Part (b) explains that viruses are perceived to contain small parts which are not seen by people. Consequently, it is known that often when a virus spreads, small particles are dispersed in the air. Components (c)–(e) are closely related and explain that these particles can get into a person’s body and they can spread to other people and cause harm. The final section (f) in the explication is anthropocentric and explains the effect of a virus on a human body. Goddard and Wierzbicka also argue that a COVID-19-specific use of the term virus has emerged in the situation of the global coronavirus pandemic. They identify this meaning as virus2 and argue that it refers to COVID-19 virus. The authors observe that this meaning tends to be used with the definite article as in the following examples (p. 10): (2a) Even before the virus, the economy was barely limping along. (2b) And now for the latest news on the virus.

The explication capturing this meaning is the following (p. 10): Explication [E] virus2 (e.g., “even before the virus, . . .”) a) something very bad is happening in many countries on earth now, very bad things are happening to many people this is happening because there is virus-1 of one kind (“coronavirus”) in these people’s bodies b) when there is virus-1 of this kind in the bodies of some people in a place, a short time after, this virus-1 can be in the bodies of many other people in this place c) because of this, after some time this virus-1 can be in the bodies of many people in many places

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.011 Published online by Cambridge University Press

10 Natural Semantic Metalanguage and Context

The explication refers to the first meaning virus1 which is used here as a derivational base. In this explication, part (a) describes the situation of the global coronavirus pandemic, part (b) spells out the characteristic of the coronavirus when it can spread easily from person to person, part (c) explains the results of the spread of the virus and its effect on many people. Goddard and Wierzbicka hypothesize that with the decline of the pandemic this meaning is likely to fade out of use. The proposed explications satisfy the criteria of an NSM semantic explication spelled out by Goddard above; they are worded in the NSM metalanguage, they are coherent, satisfy a native speaker intuition, and reflect a naïve worldview. Also, they are compatible with the range of use of the word and can be substituted in the context of use. Analysis of the use of the term virus also illustrates the way polysemy is treated in the NSM analysis. This analysis identifies an emerging use of the word virus relating to the coronavirus pandemic. The use of NSM allowed the authors to design two different explications satisfying the context of use, thus confirming the polysemy of the word.

10.3.2 Semantic Template: Conceptual Structure and Context Semantic template is a salient notion in the NSM approach. According to Goddard (2020: 97), a semantic template is “an arrangement of component types which is shared by explications for words of a particular class or subclass.” Research has identified the importance of establishing a semantic template for subclasses of physical activity verbs (e.g., run, eat, cut, grind), life-form words (e.g., fish, bird), emotions (e.g., happy, sad), among many others. Semantic templates, on the one hand, allow to achieve greater coherence in an explication and simultaneously they reflect the cognitive ability to process the complexity of information. On the other hand, a semantic template can explain how a lexical unit functions in the linguistic context and how it ‘hooks’ with the neighboring words. We will illustrate the issues of a semantic template and polysemy with the semantic analysis of the verb to dig presented in Goddard (2015). Goddard argues that to dig has two inherent properties – first, it is locational in the sense that digging always happens in a particular PLACE and, second, it implies an effect on the ground in that place. He proposes to identify three main uses of to dig – to dig1 as basic activity in progress, to dig2 + NOUN (something created by a human in the ground) as exemplified in (3a and 3b) and to dig3 for as exemplified in (4): (3) a. He dug a hole (in the ground). b. They dug a well (tunnel, grave, trench). (4) He was digging for potatoes (gold, water, buried treasure).

Therefore, the three uses of to dig can be distinguished by different lexicosyntactic frames of the verb. Goddard proposes the following explications for three uses of to dig:

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.011 Published online by Cambridge University Press

231

232

ANNA GLADKOVA

Explication [F]: Someone is digging1 somewhere. someone is doing something somewhere for some time because of this, something is happening in this place during this time this someone is doing it with something at many times when someone does this in a place, it is like this: – a short time before, this someone thought like this: “I want some of the ground [m] in this place to be after this time not in the place where it is now”

LEXICOSYNTACTIC FRAME PROTOTYPICAL SCENARIO

when someone does this in a place, the same thing happens many times it happens like this: – this someone holds [m] something for some time – during this time, this someone does something to this something with parts of this someone’s body – because of this, part of this thing is inside the ground [m] in this place for a short time – during this time, this thing moves as this someone wants – because of this, something happens to the ground [m] in this place at this time – because of this, after this, some of the ground [m] is not in the place where it was before

MANNER + EFFECT (HOW IT HAPPENS)

if this someone does this for some time, after this, much of the ground [m] in this place is not in the place where it was before

POTENTIAL OUTCOME

Explication [G]: Someone X dug2 a hole (in the ground) in this place. someone X did something in this place at this time because this someone wanted there to be a hole in the ground [m] in this place

LEXICOSYNTACTIC FRAME

because of this, after this, there was a hole in the ground [m] in this place

OUTCOME

it happened like this: this someone was digging [d] in this place for some time

HOW IT HAPPENED

Explication [H]: Someone was digging3 for potatoes (water, gold, etc.) in this place. someone was doing something somewhere for some time because this someone wanted to do something with this something

LEXICOSYNTACTIC FRAME

it happened like this: – some time before, this someone thought like this about this place: “maybe there is something good of one kind (potatoes, water, gold) below the ground [m] in this place I want to know if there is something like this below the ground [m] in this place, I want it not be below the ground [m] anymore I want to do something with it” – because of this, this someone wanted to do something to the ground [m] in this place – because of this, this someone was doing something in this place for some time like someone does when someone is digging [m] in a place for some time

HOW IT HAPPENED

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.011 Published online by Cambridge University Press

10 Natural Semantic Metalanguage and Context

The semantic template of the main use (dig1) consists of a lexicosyntactic frame, prototypical scenario, manner and effect (how it happens), and a potential outcome. The lexicosyntactic frame constitutes the foundation of the explication and reflects the inherent syntactic properties of the analyzed word. Goddard (2015) defines a lexicosyntactic frame as “the top-most set of components, expressed in a very generic way. These identify the core participants, inherent aspect, and other conceptual components that are important in the macro grammar of a language.” He further elaborates that they “account for much of the morphosyntactic behavior of a given verb, as they identify the core participants and their semantic roles, inherent aspect, and, often, components of volitionality and control.” In the case of to dig1, the process is necessarily durational (it happens for some time) and as a result of it, something happens in the place due to a person performing this activity in that place. Using NSM it is formulated as follows: someone is doing something somewhere for some time because of this, something is happening in this place during this time this someone is doing it with something

The prototypical scenario in explication (F) describes the intention of the person to conduct this activity. The manner and effect section contains the description of the actual process and the potential outcome section reaffirms the result of the process. The structure of the extensional uses of to dig2 and to dig3 have a lot in common; however, they are not fully identical and reflect syntactic and semantic properties of these uses. In both cases, these meanings are presented as extensions of the main use of to dig1, and the meaning of to dig1 is incorporated into the explications of to dig2 and to dig3. Broadly speaking, the semantic template of the explication is reflective of the semantic content and the context the word functions in. Thus, since to dig2 applies to nouns, such as well, tunnel, grave, and trench, the final section of the explication, includes an “analogy of action” component: this someone was doing something in this place for some time like someone does when someone is digging [m] in a place for some time

Therefore, the activity described in the process to dig a well (a tunnel, etc.) is depicted not as ordinary digging, but like ordinary digging. This component provides a mechanism of meaning extension. As for the “digging for” construction, it involves knowledge that things of a certain kind that people might want to have can be found in or under the ground. Consequently, explication (H) contains reference to the object of action (e.g., potatoes, gold). This explication includes dig as a molecule, that is, explication of dig1 is incorporated into this explication.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.011 Published online by Cambridge University Press

233

234

ANNA GLADKOVA

10.4 NSM in the Interpretation of Cultural Context 10.4.1 Culture as a Context for Linguistic Meaning We now turn to the issue of the influence of broader context on linguistic meaning in a particular cultural context. By culture here we mean ideas, beliefs, and understandings that are shared by speakers of a particular language in a certain locality. The locality is considered broadly here. The important view here is that language serves as an embodiment of cultural ideas that are shared by its users. We consider the definition of culture proposed by anthropologist Clifford Geertz to be relevant here. By culture he understood “a historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes towards life” (Geertz 1973: 89). This interpretation of culture is labeled “semiotic.” Geertz also emphasized the permeability of cultural ideas and beliefs. Geertz (1973: 5) uses a metaphor suggested by Max Weber to explain how an anthropologist can approach the task of studying culture: Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law, but an interpretive one in search of meaning.

To develop the ideas of Geertz and Weber in relation to context further, culture can be regarded as a “thick” context in which the use of language needs to be understood and interpreted. A linguist’s task lies in the search for and interpretation of the meanings of cultural “webs” as they are encoded in language – the primary means of human communication. The NSM approach provides a methodological tool which is capable of interpreting meaning in cultural context. We will demonstrate the application of NSM in the interpretation of cultural meaning using examples of cultural keywords, culture-specific meanings, and cultural scripts.

10.4.2 Cultural Keywords Anna Wierzbicka’s search for lexical universals in language went hand in hand with the search for culture-specific elements of meaning. This kind of research led to the understanding that culture manifests itself in language in an array of ways. “Cultural ideas” penetrate language and get encoded in the meanings of lexemes, morphemes, and grammatical constructions, as well as speech practices. Cultural keywords are an illustration of such cultural meanings (Wierzbicka 1997; Levisen and Waters 2018). Wierzbicka (1997: 15–16) defines cultural keywords as “words which are particularly important and revealing in a given culture.” Cultural keywords are prominent in the collective psyche of a society and their meanings resonate with meanings of other linguistic units and cultural practices. Often, these words denote values, attitudes, speech acts, social

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.011 Published online by Cambridge University Press

10 Natural Semantic Metalanguage and Context

categories, among others. Wierzbicka (1997: 16) explains that “there is no finite set of such words in a language, and there is no ‘objective discovery procedure’ for identifying them. To show that a particular word is of special importance in a given culture, one has to make a case for it.” Wierzbicka further claims that a word can be regarded as a keyword if it meets the following criteria: (1) it has a relatively high frequency in the semantic domain it belongs to; (2) it is at the center of a phraseological cluster; and (3) it might be part of common sayings or expressions. Wierzbicka (1997: 16) sums up the procedure of identifying cultural key words as follows: But the question is not how to “prove” whether or not a particular word is one of the culture’s key words, but rather to be able to say something significant and revealing about that culture by undertaking an in-depth study of some of them. If our choice of words to focus on is not “inspired” we will simply not be able to demonstrate anything of interest.

Therefore, no strict rule exists in respect of the part of speech or lexical domain that a cultural keyword can belong to. In fact, it can be represented by almost any part of speech if it is shown to reveal important cultural attitudes. Observations suggest that most commonly such words are from domains of emotions, values, attitudes, social categories, among others. Wierzbicka’s research has identified the following cultural keywords for Anglo English: privacy, personal autonomy, fairness, mind, reasonable, sense, evidence, experience, among others (Wierzbicka 2006, 2014). The main principles of the NSM semantic analysis also apply to the analysis of cultural keywords. A thorough semantic investigation leads to the proposal of a semantic explication of the keyword in simple universal concepts as they are identified in the NSM. The universal properties of the primes guarantee their translatability into all languages. Thus, when culture-specific meanings are formulated using primes, they can be understood by speakers of any languages in the world. We will illustrate the idea of a cultural keyword and its NSM analysis with Levisen’s (2012, 2017) research on hygge “pleasant togetherness, coziness.” Levisen demonstrates that hygge is an extremely linguistically productive word and occurs in a wide range of constructions and derivatives: • Verbs: hygger and a light reflexive hygger sig • Speech formulae: hyg dig! and the variants ka’ du hygge dig! or du må hygge dig!, which fills in the conversational slot as the English parting routine have fun!, and can be represented as variant of ‘have hygge!’ • Adjectives: hyggelig can be used predicatively, e.g., in a det var hyggeligt ‘that was hyggelig’ • Negated forms: uhygge and uhyggelig. Uhygge, however, is not the exact opposite of hygge, and uhyggelig differs in meaning from the analytically

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.011 Published online by Cambridge University Press

235

236

ANNA GLADKOVA

generated and truly negated phrase ikke hyggelig ‘not hyggelig.’ Uhygge, can be translated roughly as ‘sinister atmosphere, eeriness’ and uhyggelig means roughly ‘eery, grim.’ • Fixed compounds: Nouns – hyggespreder ‘someone who spreads hygge,’ hyggeaften ‘hygge-evening,’ julehygge ‘Christmas-hygge,’ adventshygge ‘advent-hygge,’ hyggebelysning ‘hygge-illumination,’ hyggemusik ‘hyggemusic,’ hyggeonkel ‘hygge-oncle,’ hyggekrog ‘hygge-nook,’ hyggepianist ‘hygge-pianist,’ hyggesnak ‘hygge-chat,’ råhygge ‘raw-hygge,’ familiehygge ‘family-hygge,’ hjemmehygge ‘home-hygge’; Verbs – julehygger ‘to Christmashygge’; hyggesnakker ‘to hygge-chat.’ Therefore, hygge well fits the criterion of linguistic productivity and cultural salience as a cultural keyword. It is also a routine- and practice-forming concept. In this regard, Levisen mentions the metapragmatic code of hyggesnak ‘hygge talk,’ which stands for a relaxed, friendly frame of talking. Hyggesnak can be compare to the Anglo concept of “small talk.” Hyggesnak, however, is usually socially grounded. It typically takes place outside working hours, and within an extended time frame. Levisen claims, “Hyggesnak emerges through a collaborative social process where all participants contribute, and no one dominates the conversation. Since the pleasure of talking with others is the sole purpose, hygge-talkers actively avoid serious discussions, difficult issues, or socially divisive topics.” Levisen proposes the following NSM explication for hygge: Explication [I] hygge a) something b) people can say what this something is with the word hygge c) someone can say something about something with this word when this someone thinks like this about a place: d) it can be like this: e) good things are happening in this place now, because people are with other people now in this place for some time f) during this time people don’t want to do many things they want to do some things with the other people in this place they want to say many things to the other people in this place

Levisen (2012) demonstrates an extremely high cultural significance of hygge and relates it to an array of Danish-specific cultural values and understandings, such as the value of a “strong group identity,” the value of a “group inclusivity,” the value against, roughly, being “verbally non-participatory,” the value against, roughly, “being verbally dominant,” the value against, roughly, “not including everyone,” the value against, roughly, “raising sensitive issues,” the value against, roughly, “raising serious issues,” and the value against, roughly, “making gloomy predictions.”

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.011 Published online by Cambridge University Press

10 Natural Semantic Metalanguage and Context

10.4.3 The Influence of Multiple Types of Contexts of the Word Meaning We will illustrate the influence of social, historical, and economic context on language using the example of the concept “beautiful” across three languages – English, Russian and Spanish. Gladkova and Romero-Trillo (2014) analyze the word beautiful in English and its equivalents krasivyj in Russian and bonito in Spanish. They conclude that the three languages share the major prototypical meaning referring to positive cognitive and emotional experience evoked by seeing someone or something – beautiful1, krasivyj1, and bonito1: Explication [J] something/someone is beautiful1 (This woman is beautiful. This vase is beautiful.) (a) (b) (c) (d)

this thing [this someone] is like this: at many times, when someone sees this thing this someone can’t not feel something very good because of this at the same time, this someone can’t not think something very good about it

The analysis also confirms the presence of two other meanings in the three languages, which are regarded as extensions of the first prototypical meaning. The second meaning encodes appreciating something beautiful via hearing. This explication contains reference to the positive experience of appreciating something via seeing, that is the first meaning: Explication [K] beautiful2 singing/voice/tune (a) (b) (c) (d) (e)

this thing is like this: at many times, when someone hears this thing this someone can’t not feel something very good because of this like people can’t not feel something very good at some times when they see some things at the same time, this someone can’t not think something very good about it

The three languages are also shown to share the third use of beautiful where it describes positive experience from someone’s intellectual or physically skillful performance: Explication [L] someone does beautiful3 something (Barcelona play beautiful football, he had a beautiful idea) (a) it can be like this: (b) someone does something at some time (c) when someone else thinks about it, this someone can’t not feel something very good because of this, (d) like people can’t not feel something very good at some times when they see some things (e) at the same time, this someone can’t not think something very good about it

The three languages are shown to diverge when it comes to describing the positive experience achieved via tasting, touching, smelling, or feeling: English

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.011 Published online by Cambridge University Press

237

238

ANNA GLADKOVA

has this use of beautiful, while Russian and Spanish do not. The explication for beautiful4 is the following: Explication [M] something is beautiful4 (It’s beautiful flavor. This tastes beautiful. It was a beautiful experience.) (a) (b) (c) (d) (e)

someone can think like this at some time: ‘‘something is happening to me now, I can’t not know it I can’t not feel something very good because of this, like people can’t not feel something very good at some times when they see some things at the same time, I can’t not think something very good about it’’

The analysis demonstrates the influence of linguistic, historical, and social contexts on the meanings under analysis. From a linguistic perspective, the words sense and senses are important cultural and cognitive concepts in English with a relatively high frequency of use (Wierzbicka 2014). In Russian, however, the vocabulary for talking about “senses” differs from English, as senses are usually represented via different words – č uvstva ‘feelings,’ ošč ušč enie ‘feeling/ perception/sense’ and vosprijatie (roughly, ‘perception’). Iordanskaja (1979) on the basis of the analysis of the semantics of corresponding Russian verbs č uvstvovat’ ‘feel,’ ošč ušč at’ ‘feel/perceive/sense,’ and vosprinimat’ ‘perceive’ argues that in the Russian “naïve” model of perception smelling, touching, and taste are opposed to sight and hearing. In particular, she demonstrates that the verb vosprinimat’ ‘perceive’ is applicable to any mental ability, including reason, sight, and hearing, while the verbs č uvstvovat’ ‘feel’ and ošč ušč at’ ‘feel/perceive/sense’ are applicable to olfaction, touch, taste, kinesthetic, and other internal senses, but not seeing and hearing. Therefore, in the Russian worldview the division between seeing and hearing, on the one hand, and touching, smelling, and tasting on the other is more distinct than in English. This may influence the conceptualization of evaluative aesthetic vocabulary. From a sociological perspective, some economic factors could also play a role in this linguistic development. Howes (2005), for instance, argues that in modern culture consumerism is associated with the involvement of all senses. In particular, he associates the emergence of departmental stores and the related practice of displaying goods approachable and freely touchable for the public in the mid-nineteenth century with the transformation of the nature of capitalism from “industrial” to “consumerist” (Howes 2005: 284). Based on this fact, Howes observes a significant increase in the appeal to the five senses since the mid-nineteenth century, with a particular increase in the past decades. The revitalization of the senses was a typical phenomenon between the 1890s and the first years of the twentieth century. In this period, and in order to maintain the level and cycle of consumerism, firms promoted the appeal to the senses by the socialization of luxury goods, with their aesthetic attraction, no matter how superfluous their function might be in comparison with other more economical objects that realize the same function, e.g., luxury penmanship instruments.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.011 Published online by Cambridge University Press

10 Natural Semantic Metalanguage and Context

From the point of view of Anglo, Russian, and Spanish cultures discussed in Gladkova and Romero-Trillo (2014), consumer capitalism was particularly associated with Anglo culture (in countries such as the UK and USA and also Australia and Canada). The economic development of Russia and Spain, by contrast, was associated with a significantly smaller impact on consumerism. In particular, Russia’s nascent consumerism in the second half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century was limited to a very narrow upper class (Stearns 2006). This was followed by communist rule in the twentieth century that cut short the development of consumerism. In the case of Spain, industrialization was slow relative to that of Britain and the USA in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Landes 1999; Bhattacharyya 2011, 2020). This fact led to a weaker development of consumerism and, possibly, to a more reduced attention to the “commercialization” of the five senses. Our hypothesis is that this difference in historical and economic development (context) across three cultures could be the reason for the enlargement of the meaning of beautiful to the five senses in English and the absence of a similar phenomenon in Russian and Spanish. Therefore, with the case of beautiful and its equivalents in Russian and Spanish we were able to demonstrate the influence of a broader social and historical context on language use. The NSM served as a reliable tool in the semantic analysis that allowed us to identify this influence. We will now discuss the technique of cultural scripts.

10.4.4 Cultural Scripts Goddard and Wierzbicka (2004: 153) define cultural scripts as a “powerful new technique for articulating cultural norms, values, and practices in terms which are clear, precise, and accessible to cultural insiders and to cultural outsiders alike.” In cultural scripts the NSM is used to articulate cultural norms, ideas, and understandings that are shared by speakers of a language and that are reflected in that language. Cultural scripts are grounded in linguistic data, such as conversational routines, common sayings and proverbs, frequent collocations, and varieties of formulaic and semi-formulaic speech (Wierzbicka 2003/1991, 2002). Discourse particles, interjections, and terms of address and reference also commonly embody cultural attitudes. They can reflect communicative practices and capture specificity of a communicative style. Evidence for cultural scripts is also acquired from data of bilingual use of language (e.g., Besemeres and Wierzbicka 2007). Cultural scripts as a technique of formulating cultural norms have a number of advantages. First, cultural scripts represent the cultural insiders’ perspective. Second, the use of simple and universal concepts allows for the scripts to be verified by cultural insiders. Third, the scripts are devoid of an ethnocentric bias. The use of the same inventory of semantic primes in constructing explications and cultural scripts allows one to show explicitly the relation between the

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.011 Published online by Cambridge University Press

239

240

ANNA GLADKOVA

meaning of a word and cultural ideas and beliefs that it is related to. At the same time, cultural scripts differ from semantic explications. While semantic explications represent the meaning of a particular concept, cultural scripts reflect broader cultural norms. These norms concern ways of thinking, speaking, and behaving that are salient in a particular culture. As it has been mentioned, cultural scripts have a linguistic grounding in cultural key words, proverbs and common sayings, terms of address, phraseological patterns, among others (Goddard 2006), but they formulate ideas that are broader than the meaning of one word or concept. We will illustrate the application of cultural scripts technique analysis using the example of traditional Russian modes of interaction. In particular, we will analyze ways of talking depending on social categorization between svoi ‘close’ and č užie ‘distant’ people (as presented in Gladkova 2013a, 2017). Arguably, such ways of interaction undergo change in modern society; however, they are still recognized as salient discourse-forming concepts. Russian styles of interaction are often characterized as “polar.” In particular, anthropological studies of Russian culture note a considerable distinction in the ways in which Russian people communicate with people they know and those they don’t know (Boym, 1994; Pesmen, 2000). Consequently, “close” people receive a warm and engaged treatment, while “distant” people are treated with distinct reservation and even hostility. Arguably, the “polarity” of Russian styles of interaction is consistent with the “polarity” of the concepts svoi ‘one’s own’ and č užie ‘alien/strangers/foreigners.’ These indigenous terms encode interpersonal relationships associated with group inclusion and exclusion and represent a “folk” conceptualization of relationships. The following discussion outlines the meanings of these terms and demonstrates their relationship to Russian communicative styles. The social category svoj ‘one’s own’ (svoi in plural) refers to people of one’s immediate circle, which can include family members, members of close-knit groups, or people on the same side as oneself in a conflict. The following examples from the Russian National Corpus illustrate some of its uses: (5)

Poedu provedaju svoix – uznaju, č em oni tam zanimajutsja, pofotkaju. ‘I’ll go and check on svoi, will find out what they are doing there and take photos.’

(6)

Pomniš’, v tom godu s’’exalos’ mnogo naroda? Kak-to oni tam vse sgovorilis’. Roditeli, ix druz’ja. Tol’ko svoi. ‘Do you remember that many people came that year? They somehow arranged it among themselves. Parents and their friends. Only svoi.’

The relationship between svoi is characterized by complete trust. It involves sharing information about oneself that is not supposed to be shared with other people. One can open up with svoi without thinking what impression one’s speech and actions will produce, because svoi accept the person as he or she is. Treating other people as svoi presupposes openness and trust and extends to the domain of behavior, not just speech. In the following example from the

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.011 Published online by Cambridge University Press

10 Natural Semantic Metalanguage and Context

corpus, a woman describes her life in a communal apartment, where several families shared kitchen and bathroom facilities while having individual rooms for living. She compares living with other people to living with svoi: (7)

Oč en’ xorošaja byla kvartira – kak svoi, my nikogda ne zakryvali ni kuxnju, ni dveri. Nikto ne xodil, nič ego drug u druga ne brali, a naoborot – pomogali. Kto zaboleet – i xvorostu napekut, i vrač a vyzovut, kak rodnaja mat’ pridet sosedka. ‘It was a very good apartment. We were like svoi and never locked the kitchen or the rooms. No one entered each other’s rooms or took anything from each other. On the contrary, we helped each other. If someone fell sick, others would bake biscuits and call a doctor. A neighbor would come like one’s own mother.’

This example also reinforces the idea that people are expected to be generous, hospitable, and helpful to svoi. To summarize, svoj has the following elements of meaning: group membership, close ties, openness and mutual knowledge, a caring attitude, a positive emotional attitude toward this person, a positive feeling from being in the company of this person, and reciprocity of the attitude. Čužoj (č užie in plural) refers to people one does not know or does not know well and whom one considers to be different from oneself. The attitude toward č užoj involves the feeling of uneasiness, alienation, and difference. Čužoj entails more than not knowing another person. A person can be labeled č užoj due to perceived difference and a lack of understanding, rather than a lack of mutual knowledge. Example (8) demonstrates that č užoj can be applied to people one knows and even shares one’s life with on an everyday basis: (8) Oni, koneč no, byli v zakonnom brake, no ostavalis’ nastol’ko č užimi ljud’mi, č to mne kažetsja, daže s trudom terpeli drug druga. ‘They were, of course, legally married, but remained č užie ljudi to each other, and I even think that they could hardly stand each other.’

A typical attitude toward someone perceived as č užoj implies a significant degree of distrust and hostility. The manner of interaction with č užoj is reserved and restricted. In particular, things that are perceived as very dear and intimate (called sokrovennyj ‘hidden/innermost’) are not to be communicated to č užoj (Gladkova, 2013b). To summarize, č užoj refers to a person one does not know or does not know well, and whom one considers to be different from oneself. Consequently, one does not share information about oneself with such a person and does not feel obliged to provide care and assistance. The attitude toward č užoj involves a negative feeling, and one can also feel uncomfortable being in the company of such a person. A contextual analysis of the terms svoi and č užie demonstrates that categorizing a person in either of these ways influences the choice of communicative strategies by the speaker. “Openness” and sharing of information of all kinds characterize interaction with svoi. A common phrase, Zdes’ vse svoi ‘everyone is svoj here,’ encourages the interlocutor to speak openly and truthfully.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.011 Published online by Cambridge University Press

241

242

ANNA GLADKOVA

Similarly, in interaction with svoi one does not have to follow codes of behavior that are appropriate with people one does not know or does not know well. Consequently, the rules of “courteous” behavior, which are suitable in formal settings, are not observed with svoi. Interaction with svoi is characterized by frankness and can involve even saying not very pleasant things. “Openness” in the manner of interaction with svoi extends not only to the domain of speech but also to the domain of behavior; it involves allowing oneself to express one’s desires and to speak and behave as one wants. There is an expectation that people like svoi will not be hurt by this kind of behavior and talk, and will not use the acquired information against the speaker. With č užie one employs the opposite communicative strategies. Čužie are people with whom one is deliberately reserved and even avoids interaction. Particularly, dear and intimate (sokrovennyj) thoughts are not to be communicated to č užie. This rule, however, applies to any kind of information that can make one vulnerable. Interaction with such people involves not saying much, not offering help, and not expecting help. Not sharing one’s feelings, particularly not displaying a positive attitude, is characteristic of interaction with č užoj. We now can summarize the results of analysis in NSM formulae. Explications [N] and [O] represent meanings of the concepts svoi and č užie. [P] and [Q] are cultural scripts formulating cultural norms relating to these concepts. Explication [N] svoi (These people are svoi.) (a) some people (b) I think about these people like this: (c) these people are like one something (d) I am one of these people (e) I do many things with these people (f) these people can know many things about me I don’t want many other people to know these things (g) I want good things to happen to these people (h) if one of these people wants me to do something good for them, I will do it because of this (i) I know that these people can think about me in the same way (j) I feel something good towards these people (k) I feel something good when I am with these people

Explication [O] č užoj (č elovek) (This person – č užoj (č elovek)) (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) (h)

someone I think about this someone like this: I don’t know this someone well this someone is not someone like me because of this, it is not good if this someone knows many things about me it is not good to think like this: it is good if I do something good for this someone when I am with this someone, I can feel something bad when I think about this someone, I don’t feel something good

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.011 Published online by Cambridge University Press

10 Natural Semantic Metalanguage and Context

Explication [P] Cultural script spelling out modes of speaking and behaving with people like svoj (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) (h) (i)

[many people think like this at many times:] if I can think about someone like this: this someone is like svoj[M] when I am with this someone, it is like this: I can say many things to this someone I can’t say these things to many other people I can say many things as I want I can do many things as I want I know: this someone will not think something bad about me because I do something it is good if I want to do good things for this someone

Explication [Q] Cultural script spelling out modes of speaking and behaving with people like č užoj (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (g) (h) (i)

[many people think like this at many times:] if I think about someone like this: this someone is like č užoj[M] it is not good if this someone knows many things about me because of this, when I am with this someone it is not good if I say many things to this someone when I say something to this someone, I don’t want this someone to think like this about me: this someone feels something good toward me it is not good to think like this: this someone can do something good for me it is not good to think like this: it is good if I do something good for this someone

10.5 Further Developments and Applications of NSM NSM has been a productive program which has undergone significant developments. Among most recent major NSM advances has been the development of Minimal Language. Wierzbicka (2014) introduces the concept of Minimal English in her book Imprisoned in English: The Hazards of English as a Default Language (chapter 14). She views it as “a common auxiliary inter-language for speakers of different languages.” As a base, this minilanguage uses the NSM but also includes more complex meanings, such as semantic molecules – universal, near-universal, and culture-specific. It is expected that language-specific versions of Minimal Languages can be identified and developed for each language (e.g., Minimal Korean, Minimal Spanish). While Minimal Language is a relatively new development, it has been successfully applied in the analysis of different types of contexts and discourses. In particular, there has been fruitful application in the areas of narrative medicine (Marini 2018), disability and mental health issues (Jordan 2017), diplomacy (Maley 2018; Farrelly and Wesley 2018), language teaching (Bullock 2012–2020; Sadow 2019), among others. The advances in the theory and application of Minimal Language are presented in Goddard (2018b) and (2021).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.011 Published online by Cambridge University Press

243

244

ANNA GLADKOVA

The power and potential of Minimal Language has been extensively demonstrated in Wierzbicka’s recent book What Christians Believe: The Story of God and People (2019). The book retells and re-thinks the basics of Christian faith in simple words and linguistic constructions. The text is an experiment in semantics and theology simultaneously, and it is also an experiment in crosscultural communication through a Minimal Language. Two other versions of this book have been already published in Polish and Russian (Wierzbicka 2017 and 2021b) and, potentially, can be studied further in order to identify the universality and translatability of Minimal Language.

References Apresjan, Ju. (1992). Lexical Semantics: User’s Guide to Contemporary Russian Vocabulary. [Translation of Ju. Apresjan 1974. Leksič eskaja semantika: sinonimič eskie sredstva jazyka. (In Russ.)] Ann Arbor: Karoma Publishers. Besemeres, M., and Wierzbicka, A., eds. (2007). Translating Lives: Living with Two Languages and Cultures. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press. Bhattacharyya, S. (2011). Growth Miracles and Growth Debacles: Exploring Root Causes. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Bhattacharyya, S. (2020). A History of Global Capitalism: Feuding Elites and Imperial Expansion. Cham: Springer Nature. Boym, S. (1994). Common Places: Mythologies of Everyday Life in Russia. Cambridge/ London: Harvard University Press. Bromhead, H. (2018). Landscape and Culture: Cross-linguistic Perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Bullock, D. (2012–2020). Learn These Words First: Multi-layer Dictionary for SecondLanguage Learners of English. https://learnthesewordsfirst.com. Farrelly, N., and Wesley, M. (2018). Internationalizing Minimal English: Perils and parallels. In C. Goddard (ed.), Minimal English for a Global World: Improved Communication Using Fewer Words, 95–112. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures. Selected essays by Clifford Geertz. London: Hutchinson. Gladkova, A. (2013a). “Is he one of ours?” The cultural semantics and ethnopragmatics of social categories in Russian. Journal of Pragmatics, 55, 180–194. Gladkova, A. (2013b). “Intimate” talk in Russian: Human relationships and folk psychotherapy. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 33, 322–343. Gladkova, A. (2017). Communication modes, Russian. In Young Yun Kim, (ed.) The International Encyclopedia of Intercultural Communication. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Gladkova, A., and Larina, T. (2018). Anna Wierzbicka, Words and the World. Russian Journal of Linguistics, 22(3), 499–520. doi: 10.22363/2312-9182-2018-223-499-520. Gladkova, A. and Romero-Trillo, J. (2014). Ain’t it beautiful? The conceptualization of beauty from an ethnopragmatic perspective. Journal of Pragmatics, 60, 140–159. Goddard, Cliff. (2000). Polysemy: A problem of definition. In Y. Ravin and C. Leacock (eds.), Polysemy: Theoretical and Computational Approaches (pp. 129–151). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.011 Published online by Cambridge University Press

10 Natural Semantic Metalanguage and Context

Goddard, C. (2006). Ethnopragmatics. A new paradigm. In C. Goddard (ed.), Ethnopragmatics: Understanding Discourse in Cultural Context (pp. 1–30). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Goddard, C. (2011). Semantic Analysis: A Practical Introduction, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goddard, C. (2015). Verb classes and valency alternations (NSM approach), with special reference to English physical activity verbs. In A. Malchukov and B. Comrie (eds.), Valency Classes in the World’s Languages (pp. 1649–1680). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Goddard, C. (2016). Semantic molecules and their role in NSM lexical definitions. Cahiers de Lexicologie, 2(109), 13–34. Goddard, C. (2018a). Ten Lectures on Natural Semantic Metalanguage: Exploring Language, Thought and Culture Using Simple, Translatable Words. Leiden: Brill. Goddard, C. (2018b). Minimal English for a Global World: Improved Communication Using Fewer Words. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Goddard, C. (2020). Natural Semantic Metalanguage. In W. Xu and J. R. Taylor (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics (pp. 93–110). New York: Taylor & Francis Group. Goddard, C. (2021). Minimal Languages in Action. Cham: Springer Nature. Goddard, C., and Wierzbicka, A., eds. (1994). Semantic and Lexical Universals: Theory and Empirical Findings. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Goddard, C., and Wierzbicka, A., eds. (2002). Meaning and Universal Grammar: Theory and Empirical Findings, Vols. I, II. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Goddard, C., and Wierzbicka, A. (2004). Cultural scripts: What are they and what are they good for? Intercultural Pragmatics, 1–2, 153–166. Goddard, C., and Wierzbicka, A. (2014). Words and Meanings: Lexical Semantics Across Domains, Languages, and Cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goddard, C., and Wierzbicka, A. (2021). Semantics in the time of coronavirus: “Virus,” “bacteria,” “germs,” “disease” and related concepts. Russian Journal of Linguistics 25 (1). 7–23. Howes, D. (2005). Hyperesthesia, or, the sensual logic of late capitalism. In D. Howes (ed.), Empire of the Senses: The Sensual Culture Reader (pp. 281–303). Oxford: Berg. Iordanskaja, L. (1979). The semantics of three Russian verbs of perception: Vosprinimat’ “(to) perceive,” ošč ušč at’ “(to) sense” and č usvstvovat’ “(to) feel.” Linguistics, 17, 825–842. Jordan, P. (2017). How to Start, Carry on and End Conversations: Scripts for Social Situations for People on the Autism Spectrum. London: Jessika Kingsley Publishers. Landes, D. (1999). The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor? London: Abacus. Leibniz, G. W. (1956). Preface to an edition of Nizolius. In Philosophical Papers and Letters: A Selection, trans. and ed., with intro. by L. E. Loemker (Vol. I, pp. 186–202). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Leibniz, G. W. [1678] (1987). The analysis of languages. In M. Dascal, Leibniz, Language, Signs and Thought: A Collection of Essays (pp. 161–165). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Levisen, C. (2012). Cultural Semantics and Social Cognition: A Case Study on the Danish Universe of Meaning. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.011 Published online by Cambridge University Press

245

246

ANNA GLADKOVA

Levisen, C. (2017). Communication modes, Danish. In Young Yun Kim (gen. ed.), K. L. McKay-Semmler (associate ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Intercultural Communication. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Levisen, C., and Waters, S., eds. (2018). Cultural Keywords in Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Maley, W. (2018). Minimal English and diplomacy. In C. Goddard (ed.), Minimal English for a Global World: Improved Communication Using Fewer Words (pp. 71–93). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Marini, M. G. (2019). Languages of Care in Narrative Medicine: Words, Space and Time in the Healthcare Ecosystem. Cham: Springer Nature. Mel’č uk, I. (2016). Language: From Meaning to Text. Moscow/Boston: Academic Studies Press. The Natural Semantic Metalanguage Homepage. https://intranet.secure.griffith.edu.au /schools-departments/natural-semantic-metalanguage. Peeters, B., ed. (2006). Semantic Primes and Universal Grammar: Empirical Evidence from the Romance Languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Pesmen, D. (2000). Russia and Soul: An Exploration. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Sadow, L. (2019). An NSM-based cultural dictionary of Australian English: From theory to practice. Ph.D. thesis, Australian National University. Stearns, P. (2006). Consumerism in the World History: The Global Transformation of Desire, 2nd ed. New York/London: Routledge. Wierzbicka, A. (1972). Semantic Primitives. (Trans. A. Wierzbicka and J. Besemeres.) Frankfurt: Athenäum Verlag. Wierzbicka, A. (1996). Semantics: Primes and Universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wierzbicka, A. (1997). Understanding Cultures through Their Key Words: English, Russian, Polish, German, and Japanese. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wierzbicka, A. (2002). Russian cultural scripts: The theory of cultural scripts and its applications. Ethos, 30(4): 401–432. Wierzbicka, A. (2003/1991). Cross-Cultural Pragmatics, 2nd ed. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Wierzbicka, A. (2006). English: Meaning and Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wierzbicka, A. (2014). Imprisoned in English: The Hazards of English as a Default Language. New York: Oxford University Press. Wierzbicka, A. (2015). Natural Semantic Metalanguage. In Tracy, Karen (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Wierzbicka, A. (2017). W co wierzą chrześcijanie? Opowieść o Bogu i o ludziach (What Christians Believe: The Story of God and People). Cracow: Znak. Wierzbicka, A. (2019). What Christians Believe: The Story of God and People in Minimal English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wierzbicka, A. (2021a). “Semantic primitives,” fifty years later. Russian Journal of Linguistics, 25(2), 317–342. Wierzbicka, A. (2021b). Vo č to verjat xristiane: Istorija Boga i ljudej. [What Christians Believe: The Story of God and People.] Moscow: Languages of Slavonic Cultures. (Trans. from English into Russian by Anna Gladkova.)

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.011 Published online by Cambridge University Press

11 Relevance Theory and Context Deirdre Wilson

11.1 Introduction Here is a fairly standard definition of pragmatics: “Pragmatics studies the use of language in context, and the context-dependence of various aspects of linguistic interpretation” (Lycan 1995: 588). According to this definition, providing an adequate account of context is not just an optional extra for pragmatics but part of the job description. Yet there is no general consensus in pragmatics on the nature of context and its role in utterance production or interpretation. As Meibauer (2012: 9) puts it, “Although most scholars would accept that the notion of context is fundamental not only for pragmatics, but also for linguistics in general, robust theories of context are lacking.” The lack of an adequate account of context in pragmatics is due less to disagreement about the goals of pragmatic theory than to doubts about whether such a theory is achievable at all. Since the pioneering work of Grice (1957, 1967, 1969), much research in pragmatics has centered on a type of communication, arguably unique to humans, in which the communicator intends not only to inform the audience of something, but also to make clear to the audience that she has this intention. Utterances are prime examples of such overtly intentional (ostensive) communicative acts, and a main goal of pragmatics is to explain how hearers recognize the informative intentions behind them. It is generally agreed that there is no fail-safe procedure for doing this. The intended import of an utterance cannot be decoded but only non-demonstratively inferred, by constructing a “best hypothesis” about the speaker’s meaning based on evidence provided by the linguistic meaning of the sentence uttered, together with the context (Horn and Ward 2004; Allan and Jaszczolt 2012; Huang 2017). In this chapter I will consider the treatment of context in Relevance Theory, a cognitively oriented pragmatic theory which sees human communication and cognition as governed by the search for relevance (Sperber and Wilson I would like to thank Robyn Carston for valuable comments on an earlier version.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.012 Published online by Cambridge University Press

248

DEIRDRE WILSON

1986/1995; Carston 2002; Wilson and Sperber 2012; Clark 2013). Relevance Theory approaches the context in cognitive terms and argues that it is not fixed in advance of the utterance but constructed in the course of the comprehension process, using information derived from perception, memory, and/or inference. As Sperber and Wilson (1986/1995: 15–16) put it: A context is a psychological construct, a subset of the hearer’s assumptions about the world. It is these assumptions, of course, rather than the actual state of the world, that affect the interpretation of an utterance. A context in this sense is not limited to information about the immediate physical environment or the immediately preceding utterances: expectations about the future, scientific hypotheses or religious beliefs, anecdotal memories, general cultural assumptions, beliefs about the mental state of the speaker, may all play a role in interpretation.

The fact that there seems to be no principled limit to the type of contextual information used in utterance interpretation raises an immediate question for pragmatics. How do hearers more often than not find the right contextual information and thus succeed in recognizing the speaker’s informative intention?

11.1.1 Skepticism about Pragmatics It is sometimes argued, by both linguists and philosophers, that there is no satisfactory general answer to this question, and that an adequate pragmatic theory is therefore not achievable at all. Chomsky (1992: 120) maintains that utterance interpretation is too complex to be a suitable topic for theoretical investigation: There is . . . a . . . problem, which we can formulate in vague terms but which cannot be studied in practice: namely to construct an “interpreter” which includes the parser as a component, along with all other capacities of the mind . . . and accepts non-linguistic as well as linguistic input. The interpreter, presented with an utterance and a situation, assigns some interpretation to what is being said by a person in this situation. The study of communication in the actual world of experience is the study of the interpreter, but this is not a topic of empirical enquiry for the usual reasons: there is no such topic as the study of everything.

Similar views are expressed by the psycholinguist Ray Gibbs (2017: 324), who argues that whatever regularities exist in pragmatics cannot be isolated from the operation of the cognitive system as a whole: It may very well be true that people often act co-operatively in linguistic interactions, and appear to be interested in what others may know and are intending to do. Yet these regularities are emergent from the human system overall and not the output of some specialized “pragmatics” part of the mind.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.012 Published online by Cambridge University Press

11 Relevance Theory and Context

Or, as the philosophers Herman Cappelen and Ernie Lepore (2005: 190) conclude, “there can be no systematic theory of speech act content.” Another philosopher who was famously skeptical about the prospects for theorizing in pragmatics was Jerry Fodor. Surveying the state of the art in cognitive science, Fodor (1983) distinguished local (typically modular) cognitive processes, which have access only to information from some fixed cognitive domain, from global (typically central) processes, which have free access to information from any source. In his view, while some progress had been made in studying local processes, global processes remained a mystery, and he went on to propose Fodor’s First Law of the Nonexistence of Cognitive Science: “The more global . . . a cognitive process is, the less anybody understands it” (p. 107). Much of the skepticism in philosophy and linguistics about the prospects for constructing an adequate pragmatic theory is linked to the fact that pragmatic processes (e.g., disambiguation, reference resolution, figurative interpretation, identification of implicatures,1 and so on) are global rather than local processes, whose outcome may be affected by contextual information derived from anywhere in the cognitive system (on the issues raised in this section, see Carston 2002: 1–14; Allott 2019; Allott and Wilson 2021; Wilson 2022).

11.1.2 Minimizing the Role of Context One reason why more progress has been made in studying local rather than global processes is that local processes have so far proved more amenable to formal treatment. It is therefore worth considering how the pragmatic processes involved in recognizing a speaker’s informative intention might be formalized too. Here I will look at two attempts to move toward a more formal approach to utterance interpretation which seem to me to set off in the wrong direction, by trying to reduce appeals to context to a minimum. The first approach centers on Grice’s (1967/1989: 37) distinction between particularized and generalized implicatures. As Grice describes them, particularized implicatures (illustrated in footnote 1) are “entirely dependent on special features of the context,” whereas in generalized implicatures, “the use of a certain form of words in an utterance would normally (in the absence of special circumstances) carry such-and-such an implicature or type of implicature.” The association of generalized implicatures with particular “forms of words” seems to open the way to formal treatments not available for particularized cases, and there is now a considerable literature on generalized implicatures and the linguistic constructions which give rise to them (Horn 1984, 2004; Hirschberg 1991; Levinson 2000; Noveck and Sperber 2007; Noveck 2018; Zufferey et al. 2019). 1

An implicature is a proposition which is implicitly communicated without being linguistically encoded (e.g., saying “I’m driving” when offered a drink might implicate that you don’t want a drink) (Grice 1967/1989: 22–40; Horn 2004; Allott 2018).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.012 Published online by Cambridge University Press

249

250

DEIRDRE WILSON

Perhaps the best-known examples of generalized implicature arise in scalar utterances such as (1a), where use of the less informative scalar term some rather than the stronger alternative all would often implicate ‘not all,’ as in (1b): (1)

a. Some of the food was delicious. b. Not all of the food was delicious.

Stephen Levinson (2000) proposes a semi-formal account of generalized implicatures such as (1b) as “default,” or “preferred,” interpretations, which are automatically assigned to utterance types and accepted as part of the speaker’s meaning unless explicitly or contextually cancelled (e.g., by adding “In fact, all the food was top notch”). On this approach, contextual information plays no role in the derivation of generalized implicatures and contributes nothing to their content: Its only function is to cancel any such implicature that combines with it to yield a contradiction (Geurts 2010: chapter 1.5). There is thus a clear distinction between the roles of context in the derivation of generalized implicatures and particularized cases, which are still seen as heavily context dependent. For Levinson, the main advantage of his default account is that it improves the speed and efficiency of communication, sparing speakers the effort of putting generalized implicatures into words and hearers the effort of inferring them from contextual information. Noveck and Sperber (2007) compare this default account with an alternative relevance-theoretic account which treats the generalized–particularized distinction as one not of kind but only of degree, with context making important contributions to both. As they point out, the two accounts make different predictions about the processing of scalar utterances such as (1a). According to the default account, hearers should find it easier to interpret (1a) as carrying the automatically generated implicature in (1b) than go to the effort of cancelling it, whereas according to the relevance-theoretic account, hearers should find it easier to interpret (1a) as lacking the implicature in (1b) than go to the effort of inferring it from contextual information. Noveck and Sperber (2007: 198–209) report a series of experiments which confirm the predictions of the relevance-theoretic account. Moreover, as Noveck and Sperber point out, Levinson’s claim that the default account improves the speed and efficiency of communication is valid only on the assumption that generalized implicatures such as (1b) are routinely accepted as part of the speaker’s meaning and rarely have to be cancelled. Noveck (2018: 99–100) reports a series of experiments which substantially undermine this assumption, indicating, on the contrary, that the derivation of scalar implicatures is not a common occurrence, nor is it automatic . . . adults do not necessarily carry them out routinely and context is critical to making them occur. It is hard to argue – based on a wide range of data – that scalar enrichments arise automatically.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.012 Published online by Cambridge University Press

11 Relevance Theory and Context

Levinson’s attempt at the partial formalization of generalized implicatures is therefore questionable on both theoretical and empirical grounds. Moreover, it does not answer the central question for pragmatics, since it leaves the global nature of the pragmatic processes involved in contextually cancelling generalized implicatures or inferring particularized implicatures unaddressed (for further discussion, see Carston 1995, 1998; Sperber and Wilson 1995: 276–278; Noveck and Sperber 2007; Dupuy et al. 2016). A more radical move in a similar direction is made by Ernie Lepore and Matt Stone (2015: 6), who argue that “much more of interpretation than one might have expected is encoded in the rules of language.” Their aim is to show that a massively expanded set of linguistic and discourse conventions, generating a much wider range of semantic interpretations than are available on standard truth-conditional accounts, makes it possible to drop the notion of implicature entirely, and with it much of the machinery of inferential pragmatics. On this approach, the two possible interpretations of a scalar utterance such as (1a) are treated as distinct conventional linguistic meanings, cued by different types of discourse context; Lepore and Stone go on to claim that not only generalized implicatures but even many particularized implicatures can be reanalyzed using this richer set of linguistic conventions. Within this framework, the only function of contextual information is to choose between conventional linguistic meanings. As Lepore and Stone (2015: 83) put it, “Pragmatics can be, at most, a theory of disambiguation; pragmatic reasoning never contributes content to utterances.” However, this reduction in the scope of pragmatics comes at a price. Grice’s most original contribution was to show that as long as the addressee has some way of recognizing the communicator’s informative intention, communication can take place even in the absence of a code. This opens up the possibility of a unitary inferential pragmatic account of the role of context not only in nonverbal communication, but in both conventional and creative uses of language too. By arguing that any aspect of communicated content which cannot be treated as the output of linguistic conventions lies beyond the scope of pragmatics, Lepore and Stone rule out the possibility of such a unitary pragmatic account. Here is what they say about metaphor: The commonplace view about metaphorical interpretation is that it can be characterised in traditional semantic and pragmatic terms, thereby assimilating metaphor to other familiar uses of language. We will reject this view, and propose in its place the view that, though metaphors can issue in distinctive cognitive and discourse effects, they do so without issuing in metaphorical meaning and truth, and so without metaphorical communication. (Lepore and Stone 2010: 1)

They go on to claim that the effects not only of metaphor but of irony, humor, hinting, and other creative uses of language are governed by “distinct imaginative processes” which are too heterogeneous and open-ended to be dealt with in pragmatic theory as traditionally conceived (Lepore and Stone 2015: 155). As they see it, there is no set of “general interpretive principles” which explain

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.012 Published online by Cambridge University Press

251

252

DEIRDRE WILSON

how these creative uses of language could be understood based only on “the meaning of what the speaker uttered, background knowledge, and overarching pragmatic principles” (p. 160). What they are offering, then, is a pragmatic theory that deals only with literal utterances – at a time when the interpretation of metaphor, irony, humor, hinting, and other creative uses of language is crying out for explanation and the literal–figurative distinction itself is increasingly under attack (Searle 1978; Atlas 2000; Ariel 2002; Recanati 2004; Sperber and Wilson 2008; Carston 2012). In fact, even on Lepore and Stone’s minimalist view of pragmatics, there is little of theoretical interest to say. While acknowledging that utterance interpretation involves some form of intention recognition, they believe that this relies on no special-purpose principles other than those used in interpreting contributions to joint activity in general. In particular, [it] doesn’t appeal to anything like Grice’s Cooperative Principle, and typically exploits shallow cues rather than deep inferences about the speaker’s mental state. Although this is pragmatics in the sense that it is concerned with explaining the behavior of rational agents, it is a very different enterprise from the pragmatics assumed in most previous theories. (Lepore and Stone 2015: 165)

Thus, Lepore and Stone join the company of those who dismiss the idea of a dedicated pragmatic theory as either unnecessary or unachievable, while leaving the role of context in a wide range of uses of language unexplained (for further discussion, see Chierchia 2004; Bezuidenhout 2016; Carston 2016; Harris 2017; Stojnić 2021).

11.1.3 Context and Common Ground However broadly or narrowly the role of context is construed, Levinson, Lepore, and Stone, like most people working on pragmatics, see the context for comprehension as drawn largely from the speaker and hearer’s common ground. This is described as consisting of “mutually recognized shared information” (Stalnaker 2002: 704): that is, information which is not only shared by speaker and hearer, but believed to be shared, and believed to be believed to be shared, and so on ad infinitum (Lewis 1969). According to Clark and Marshall (1981: 27), restricting the context to information drawn only from the common ground – while unachievable in practice because of the infinite series of checks that would be required – is “an ideal people strive for because they . . . want to avoid misunderstanding whenever possible.” The proposed link between context and common ground has stimulated a flood of research and continuing efforts to develop an empirically useful notion of common ground (Smith 1982; Sperber and Wilson 1990; Clark 1996: chapter 4; Eilan et al. 2005). However, there is little evidence that speakers and hearers strive to restrict the context for comprehension to common-ground information, or that it would improve their chances of successful communication if they did.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.012 Published online by Cambridge University Press

11 Relevance Theory and Context

Here is an example from Dan Sperber (2021) in which the hearer ignores a potential referent from the common ground and chooses a non-commonground referent instead: (2) Mary and Jane have a common friend, Mike Smith. Mary and Jane are also both friends with a Mike Jones, but they have never seen him together or talked to one another about him. Mary actually knows that Jane is also friends with Mike Jones, but Jane does not know that Mary knows. One day Mary sees Jane and Mike Jones kissing in the park. That evening, she says to Jane, “I didn’t know that Mike was your boyfriend!” Who is she talking about? Mike Jones, who was not in the common ground!

In the common-ground literature, such cases are described as involving accommodation, a process by which “the context is adjusted quietly and without fuss to accept the utterance of a sentence that imposes certain requirements on the context in which it is processed” (von Fintel 2008: 137). Some of these requirements are semantic, while others are properly pragmatic (Lewis 1979; Stalnaker 1999; Roberts 2015; Garcia-Carpintero 2016). In interpreting Mary’s utterance in (2), Jane chooses a referent from outside the common ground for pragmatic reasons. If she had stuck to common-ground information and refused to extend the context, she would have misunderstood. In fact, even restricting the context to common-ground information may not be enough to avoid misunderstanding. In (3), for instance, two flatmates may have “mutually recognized shared information” about several pens, the loss of any of which would make the utterance true, but only one of which might be valuable enough for its loss to be worth remarking on: (3)

I lost my pen.

In interpreting (3), the potential common-ground referents would be narrowed to a single one for pragmatic reasons, and the hearer would take the intended referent to be the valuable pen. More generally, two people who share a physical environment, language, and culture have access to a huge amount of “mutually recognized shared information,” and restricting the context to information drawn only from the common ground falls far short of explaining how hearers choose the right contextual information and thus succeed in recognizing the speaker’s informative intention. Although examples (2) and (3) both involve the use of non-common-ground information in reference resolution, the problem is quite general. Consider (4), a recent headline in a London newspaper: (4)

PM turns up for meeting. (Metro, August 11, 2022)

PM is a standard abbreviation for prime minister. For anyone who knows that the UK Prime Minister at the time was Boris Johnson, it is easy enough to recognize what is being asserted; however, to see the point of the utterance, a lot of further contextual information must be supplied. The fact that the

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.012 Published online by Cambridge University Press

253

254

DEIRDRE WILSON

Prime Minister had turned up for a meeting could be headline news only in a context where carrying out his regular prime-ministerial duties is the last thing you would expect him to do. Whatever your opinion of Boris Johnson, on reading the headline in (4), you would automatically construct a context of this type for pragmatic reasons, whether or not it is drawn from the common ground, and an adequate pragmatic theory should help to explain why. To sum up the arguments of this section, the context for utterance interpretation is not fixed in advance but constructed in the course of the comprehension process, drawing on information from anywhere in the cognitive system. Explaining how hearers find the right contextual information to use in recognizing the speaker’s informative intention is a central goal of pragmatics. Although common ground between communicators vastly increases their possibilities of communication, the idea that the context for comprehension should be drawn only from the common ground is a leftover from the code model of communication. In an inferential framework, where communication takes place at a risk and hypotheses about the speaker’s meaning are accepted or rejected on the basis of an adequate set of pragmatic principles or mechanisms, there is no reason to restrict the context in this way. I will now consider what light Relevance Theory can shed on these issues.

11.2 Relevance in Communication and Cognition Relevance Theory is based on the assumption that human cognition and communication are both governed by the search for relevance. Relevance is seen as a potential property not only of utterances and other ostensive acts, but of any perceptual stimulus (say, the sight of clouds overhead) or internal representation (say, the memory of what happened last night) that provides an input to cognitive processes. Sights, sounds, smells, actions, thoughts, memories, or conclusions of inferences may all be relevant (to an individual, at a certain time), and context plays a crucial role in establishing their relevance, whether or not communication is taking place (for brief overviews of Relevance Theory, see Wilson, 2017, 2019).

11.2.1 Relevance and Cognition In discussing relevance, linguists tend to focus on discourse-specific notions such as relevance to a topic or relevance to a question under discussion. Sperber and Wilson (1986/1995: chapter 3) define two more general notions – relevance in a context and relevance to an individual – which relate to both communication and cognition. A context consists of mentally represented information which may be of any type – beliefs, doubts, hopes, wishes, plans, goals, intentions, questions – and is selected from a range of potential contexts accessible to the individual via perception, memory, and/or inference.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.012 Published online by Cambridge University Press

11 Relevance Theory and Context

An input to cognitive processes is relevant in a context when it interacts with that context to produce a worthwhile cognitive effect: say, by answering a question, confirming a suspicion, overturning an expectation, suggesting a hypothesis or a plan of action, or yielding a contextual implication (inferable from input and context together, but from neither alone).2 A single input may achieve several such cognitive effects: For instance, the sight of clouds overhead as I set off for work may make me revise my plans to have lunch outside, strengthen my suspicion that the weather forecast always gets things wrong, and contextually imply that I should go back for an umbrella. Other things being equal, the greater the cognitive effects achieved, and the smaller the mental (or processing) effort required to produce those effects, the greater the relevance (of the input, in that context) (Wilson and Sperber 2002, section 4). In processing a certain input, the individual has a range of potential contexts available, which vary in both the amount of effort they take to construct and the cognitive effects they would yield when combined with that input. An input is described as relevant to an individual when it is relevant in one of the contexts accessible to him. Maximizing the relevance of an input involves selecting the best possible context in which to process it: that is, the one that provides the best possible balance of effort and effect given the range of accessible contexts. A central claim of Relevance Theory is that as a result of constant selection pressures toward increasing cognitive efficiency, the human cognitive system has evolved a variety of mental mechanisms or heuristics that conspire to allocate attention and processing resources to inputs with the greatest expected relevance, and to process these inputs in a context that maximizes their relevance. Why do we automatically pay attention to bright lights, loud noises, sudden movements, human faces or voices? Because our perceptual systems are geared to picking out such stimuli, which are potentially highly relevant to us. Why, seeing clouds overhead as we set off for work, do we recall the weather forecast, our plans for the day, and the umbrella we left upstairs? Because our memory and inferential systems are geared to activating contextual information which is likely to maximize the relevance of the inputs we are processing. Much of what is known about the organization of human perceptual, memory, and inferential systems is consistent with the suggestion that they tend to be geared to maximizing relevance (for experimental evidence, see Van der Henst et al. 2002; Van der Henst and Sperber 2004; Sperber 2005). An utterance, like other inputs to cognitive processes, may produce a variety of cognitive effects in the addressee, not all of which will have been intended by the speaker. As we talk, you may be making inferences about my social status and origins, my prejudices and preferences, the social relations between us, and so on, which may help to make my utterance relevant to you, whether or not I intended you to draw them. It is therefore useful to distinguish between comprehension and interpretation, where comprehension is the 2

On what makes a cognitive effect worthwhile, see Sperber and Wilson (1995: 260–266).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.012 Published online by Cambridge University Press

255

256

DEIRDRE WILSON

process of recognizing the intended import of an utterance, and interpretation includes a broader process of drawing one’s own conclusions as part of the overall cognitive search for relevance (Wilson 2022). Ostensive communication, then, takes place against a background where the addressee is permanently engaged in a cognitive search for relevance, and identifying the intended import of an utterance is only one of his goals (albeit an important one, since much of what we know could only have been acquired through communication). What pragmatic theory has to explain is not how the addressee draws his own conclusions from an utterance (this falls within the domain of a theory of cognition), but how he constructs a hypothesis about its intended import, by disambiguating ambiguous expressions, assigning reference to referential expressions, adjusting lexical meanings, assembling an appropriate set of contextual assumptions, and deriving implicatures and other cognitive effects, in a way the speaker could manifestly have foreseen and intended. On this approach, communication and cognition are intimately intertwined: Both are governed by the search for relevance, and the same perceptual, memory, and inferential mechanisms play important roles in both. What prevents the resulting account amounting to a “theory of everything” (as skeptics about the prospects for theorizing in pragmatics maintain) is that ostensive communication presents certain challenges, and exhibits certain regularities, not found in other domains, which form the basis for a dedicated pragmatic theory.

11.2.2 Relevance and Communication Relevance Theory’s account of communication centers on the notion of an ostensive act: an overtly intentional communicative act designed to attract the addressee’s attention and focus it on the communicator’s intentions. Common cues to ostension include catching someone’s eye, touching them, pointing, showing them something, speaking, and writing. Since attention tends to go automatically to what is most relevant at the time, a communicator, by the very act of addressing someone, communicates that her utterance (or other ostensive act) is relevant enough to be worth the effort required to process it. Thus, ostensive acts create expectations of relevance not raised by other stimuli, and this regularity in the domain of ostensive communication forms the basis for an automatic heuristic that addressees can use (of course at a risk) to infer the intended import of ostensive acts addressed to them. How relevant an utterance has to be to satisfy the addressee’s expectation of relevance depends on what else is going on in his cognitive environment at the time. The more relevant the other inputs competing for his attention, the more relevant an utterance has to be to out-compete them. Thus, a comment on the weather which might be relevant enough in a casual chat is unlikely to be relevant enough when addressed to someone fighting a fire, whose attention is likely to be more productively allocated elsewhere. The addressee of an

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.012 Published online by Cambridge University Press

11 Relevance Theory and Context

utterance is therefore entitled to expect that, on the intended interpretation, it will be at least relevant enough to be worth the processing effort required: otherwise, he will not attend to it or will transfer his attention elsewhere. But the addressee can also reasonably expect something more than this. The speaker wants to be understood. It is therefore in her interest to go beyond this minimal level of relevance by reducing the processing effort required and increasing the cognitive effects achieved – to the extent that this is compatible with her own abilities and preferences – thus improving her chances of holding the addressee’s attention and getting her point across. When an utterance is not only (a) relevant enough to be worth the processing effort required, but also (b) the most relevant one compatible with the speaker’s abilities and preferences, it is described as optimally relevant. Thus, the expectation raised in the addressee of an utterance (or other ostensive act) is one of optimal (rather than maximal) relevance (Sperber and Wilson 2002, 2005). On this approach, the best way for the addressee to recognize the speaker’s informative intention is to construct an overall interpretation that satisfies the expectation of optimal relevance raised by the utterance. This involves enriching the decoded sentence meaning at the explicit level (e.g., by resolving ambiguities and referential indeterminacies) and complementing it at the implicit level (e.g., by supplying contextual assumptions and deriving contextual implications) to a point where it yields enough cognitive effects, at a low enough processing cost, to be relevant in the expected way. There is, then, an automatic heuristic that hearers can use to achieve this goal: Relevance-guided comprehension heuristic Follow a path of least effort in deriving cognitive effects. Test interpretive hypotheses (e.g., disambiguations, reference resolutions, lexical adjustments, contextual assumptions and contextual implications) in order of salience. Stop when you have enough cognitive effects to satisfy the expectation of optimal relevance raised by the utterance.

What makes it reasonable for the hearer to follow a path of least effort is that the speaker is expected (within the limits of her abilities and preferences) to have made the intended import as easy as possible for him to recognize. What makes it reasonable for him to stop at the first interpretation which satisfies the expectation of optimal relevance is that a speaker who knowingly produced an utterance with two or more significantly different interpretations, each with the expected level of cognitive effect, would put the addressee to the gratuitous extra effort of choosing between them, and the resulting interpretation (if any) would not be relevant in the expected way. Thus, when an addressee following the path of least effort finds an interpretation that satisfies his expectation of optimal relevance, this is the best possible interpretive hypothesis in the absence of contrary evidence. Since communication takes place at a risk, this hypothesis, however plausible and well evidenced, may well turn out to be false; but it is the best a rational hearer can do.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.012 Published online by Cambridge University Press

257

258

DEIRDRE WILSON

The relevance-guided comprehension heuristic is seen as part of a dedicated comprehension mechanism or module which exploits a regularity that exists only in the domain of ostensive communication (Sperber and Wilson 2002, 2005). A lot of interesting work on communicative development in the last twenty years supports this approach to pragmatics. For instance, there is evidence that pre-verbal infants are sensitive to certain cues to ostension (Csibra 2010); respond differentially to ostensive and non-ostensive acts (Csibra and Gergely 2009; Schulze and Tomasello 2015); and form pragmatic expectations comparable to those of adults (Southgate et al. 2009). In the next section, I will consider how this approach might help to answer the central question for pragmatics: How do hearers more often than not use the right contextual information and thus succeed in recognizing the speaker’s meaning?

11.3 Constructing the Context for Comprehension I have tried to show that utterances raise expectations of optimal relevance not raised by other stimuli, and that hearers are equipped with a relevance-guided heuristic for inferring the speaker’s meaning. I will now look more closely at how the utterance interpretation process might go, and at how new information may be added to the context in order to satisfy expectations of relevance.

11.3.1 Explicatures and Implicatures Most approaches to pragmatics distinguish between explicit and implicit communication (or what is said and what is implicated). While Grice was mainly concerned with the implicit side of the distinction, relevance theorists see pragmatic factors as playing an equally rich and inferential role on the explicit side, in disambiguating ambiguous expressions, assigning reference to referential expressions, narrowing the interpretation of semantically vague expressions, fixing the domain of quantifiers, restoring ellipsed material, interpreting figurative expressions, and so on (Carston 2002: chapter 2.3; Carston and Hall 2012). Sperber and Wilson (1986/1995: 182) introduce the term explicature for communicated propositions which are identified by developing an encoded (incomplete) sentence meaning into a fully propositional form. Everything else communicated is an implicature. On this approach, the explicit–implicit distinction is exhaustive: a communicated proposition is either an explicature or an implicature (Sperber and Wilson 1986/1995: 182–202, 217–224). To illustrate how the relevance-guided comprehension heuristic might help with the identification of explicatures and implicatures, suppose you and I are academic colleagues; you ask if I’d like to see a film with you tonight and I reply, Sorry, I have to finish a paper. In interpreting my utterance, you have to resolve a number of indeterminacies in the encoded sentence

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.012 Published online by Cambridge University Press

11 Relevance Theory and Context

259

meaning: deciding what type of paper I have in mind (newspaper, academic paper, parliamentary paper . . .), what I have to finish doing to it (reading it, writing it, shredding it . . .), when I must finish it (this year, next year, sometime, never . . .), and so on. Depending on how these indeterminacies are resolved, the utterance will have different cognitive effects, and therefore be relevant to you in different ways. Your goal (as described in the relevanceguided comprehension heuristic) is to resolve these indeterminacies in a way that satisfies your expectation of optimal relevance. You proceed by testing candidate interpretations in order of salience, and stop when you have enough cognitive effects to make my utterance relevant in the expected way. The interpretation process is seen as taking place in parallel rather than in sequence: it is not a matter of first identifying the explicature, then selecting an appropriate set of contextual assumptions, then deriving a set of implicatures. Instead, tentative hypotheses about explicatures, contextual assumptions and implicatures are accessed in any order and mutually adjusted, with each other and with the expectation of relevance, until a pragmatically satisfactory overall interpretation is reached. The process is heavily context-dependent, and the speaker’s goal in formulating her utterance is to provide enough clues to make the appropriate disambiguations, reference resolutions, lexical adjustments, contextual assumptions and implications salient enough to be selected by a hearer using the relevance-guided comprehension heuristic (Wilson and Sperber 2004, section 4). Table 11.1 shows, in outline, how the interpretation of my utterance I have to finish a paper might proceed, with your interpretive hypotheses on the left

Table 11.1 Interpretation of my utterance I have to finish a paper (5a) DW has said, ‘Xspeaker has to finish doing Yaction to Zpaper Result of embedding the decoded (incomplete) meaning of at ttime’ the sentence “I have to finish a paper” into a description of my ostensive act. (5b) DW’s utterance will be optimally relevant to me. Expectation raised by your recognition of my ostensive act and acceptance of the presumption of relevance it conveys. (5c) DW’s utterance will achieve relevance by explaining why Expectation raised by (5b), together with the fact that such she is not accepting my invitation to see a film with me an explanation would be most relevant to you at this point. tonight. (5d) Having to finish writing an academic paper very soon is First contextual assumption to occur to you which, together a reason for refusing an invitation to see a film tonight. with other appropriate premises, might satisfy expectation (5c). Accepted as an implicit premise of my utterance. (5e) DW has to finish writing an academic paper very soon. First enriched interpretation of (5a) to occur to you which might combine with (5d) to lead to the satisfaction of (5c). Accepted as an explicature of my utterance. (5f) DW is refusing my invitation to see a film with me Inferred from contextual assumption (5d) and explicature tonight because she has to finish writing an academic paper (5e), satisfying expectation (5c) and accepted as an very soon. implicature of my utterance. (5g) DW may accept an invitation to see a film with me From (5f) plus further contextual assumptions. One of another time. several possible further implicatures which, together with (5f), satisfy expectation (5b).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.012 Published online by Cambridge University Press

260

DEIRDRE WILSON

and a note on your basis for deriving them on the right.3 At (5a), you embed the decoded (incomplete) sentence meaning, with its semantic indeterminacies (informally indicated by subscripts) still unresolved, into a description of my ostensive act. At (5b), you assume that my utterance, decoded as in (5a), will be optimally relevant to you. Since what you want to know at this point is why I am refusing your invitation, you assume at (5c) that my utterance will achieve relevance by answering this question. Given our academic connections, the decoded sentence meaning provides easy access to the contextual assumption in (5d), that having to finish writing an academic paper very soon is a good reason for refusing an invitation. You could use this as an implicit premise in deriving the expected explanation of my refusal, provided that you resolve the indeterminacies in (5a) so as to yield the explicature in (5e), that I have to finish writing an academic paper very soon. By combining the implicit premise in (5d) with the explicature in (5e), you arrive at the implicated conclusion in (5f), that I am refusing your invitation because I have to finish writing an academic paper very soon; from this, further implicatures, including (5g) and others, can be derived. The resulting interpretation satisfies your expectation of relevance. On this account, contextual assumptions, explicatures, and implicatures are arrived at by a process of mutual parallel adjustment, with hypotheses about both being considered in order of salience until enough implications to satisfy the expectations of relevance raised by the utterance are derived (Wilson and Sperber 2002, section 5; Carston and Hall 2012).

11.3.2 Implicit Premises and “Accommodation” The mutual adjustment process offers some insight into how new information may be “accommodated” into the context in the course of comprehension (Section 11.1.3). Consider the exchange in (6) (Sperber and Wilson 1986/ 1995: 16): (6)

a. Max: Would you like some coffee? b. Jan: Coffee would keep me awake.

Interpreting Jan’s utterance in (6b), Max will expect it to achieve relevance by implying a response to his offer of coffee. In different circumstances, the utterance could be construed as either an acceptance or a refusal. However, in the absence of contrary evidence, a hearer using the relevance-guided comprehension heuristic is likely to interpret it on the lines in (7), as both refusing his offer of coffee and explaining the refusal: (7)

3

a. Contextual assumption: Jan doesn’t want to stay awake tonight. b. Explicature: Drinking coffee would keep Jan awake tonight. c. Implicature: Jan is refusing coffee because it would keep her awake tonight.

I have presented these hypotheses in English, but for the hearer, they would be in whatever is the medium of conceptual thought and need not correspond very closely to my paraphrases.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.012 Published online by Cambridge University Press

11 Relevance Theory and Context

This interpretation is favored by considerations of both effort and effect. In the first place, the contextual assumption in (7a) is easily derived from, and supported by, the generalization that most people don’t want to stay awake at night; given that the organization of memory is relevance-oriented, it may therefore be the first to occur to Max. Further support for (7a) comes from the well-evidenced and frequently encountered association between drinking coffee and having difficulty getting to sleep at night, as a result of which Max may have a ready-made schema for interpreting (6b) along the lines in (7). Whether or not he uses such a schema, Jan’s indirect answer to his question will require more processing effort than an explicit Yes or No, and a speaker aiming at optimal relevance must have expected this extra effort to be offset by extra effects. The interpretation in (7), on which Jan is implicitly both refusing his offer of coffee and explaining her refusal, satisfies this expectation; by contrast, acceptances need no explanation and are rarely left implicit. In the absence of contrary evidence, this interpretation is therefore likely to be the first to occur to a hearer using the relevanceguided comprehension heuristic. The exchange in (6) shows how an under-evidenced assumption which is tentatively added to the context in the course of the mutual adjustment process may be retroactively strengthened by the fact that it leads to a pragmatically satisfactory overall interpretation. Sometimes, in order to arrive at such an interpretation, the hearer may have to add to the context an assumption he does not believe at all. This is illustrated by the following (attested) exchange between a charity flag-seller and a passerby (Sperber and Wilson 1986/1995: 121–122): (8)

a. Flag-seller: Would you like to buy a flag for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution? b. Passerby: No thanks, I always spend my holidays with my sister in Birmingham.

In the first part of (8b), the passerby refuses the flag-seller’s request, creating the expectation that she will go on to explain her refusal. However, some hearers may have difficulty recognizing what that explanation might be. What possible link could there be between holidaying in Birmingham and refusing to support the Royal National Lifeboat Institution? Well, a salient fact about the Royal National Lifeboat Institution is that it is dedicated to saving lives at sea. On the other hand, anyone who has looked at a map of England is capable of realizing that Birmingham is about as far from the sea as it is possible to be. Given these assumptions, it follows that someone who spends her holidays in Birmingham is unlikely to need the services of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. Then all that is needed to complete the link is the assumption in (9): (9) Someone who is unlikely to need the services of a charity cannot be expected to subscribe to that charity.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.012 Published online by Cambridge University Press

261

262

DEIRDRE WILSON

Interpreted in this context, (8b) yields the implicature in (10), which explains the speaker’s refusal to buy a flag, thus satisfying the hearer’s expectation of relevance: (10) The passer-by cannot be expected to subscribe to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution since she has no need of its services.

For a hearer who shares the contextual assumption in (9), or who has encountered it before, arriving at the intended interpretation may be fairly straightforward. For others, it may take more effort, and a thoughtful speaker, anticipating this, could have increased the relevance of her utterance by providing more clues. However, lapses of this type are not necessarily a bar to understanding. As Sperber and Wilson (1995: 266–271) point out, a speaker cannot reasonably be expected to go beyond her own abilities and preferences in choosing what to say or how to say it, and this is built into the expectation of optimal relevance as described in Section 11.2.1. The interpretation of utterance (8b) underlines the fact that in constructing a context for utterance comprehension, what matters is not whether the assumptions used are part of the speaker and hearer’s common ground, but whether they help to satisfy the expectation of optimal relevance raised by the utterance. As discussed in Section 11.1.3, Lepore and Stone (2015) propose to drop the notion of implicature entirely, and with it much of the machinery of inferential pragmatics, by reanalyzing implicatures as conventional meanings generated by a massively expanded set of sentence and discourse conventions. In their view, the only function of contextual information is to choose between conventional meanings (‘Pragmatics can be, at most, a theory of disambiguation; pragmatic reasoning never contributes content to utterances’). Utterance (8b), in which the contextual assumption in (9) makes a crucial contribution to the content of the implicature in (10), is a counterexample to this claim. Even a hearer equipped with a discourse convention to the effect that refusal of an offer is generally followed by an explanation may fall far short of recognizing what that explanation is. For this, he has to rely on the contextual information in (9) and derive the implicature in (10), and these are the very things that Lepore and Stone want to do without. Another case where it may be easy enough to see what is being asserted but hard to see the point of the utterance without making additional contextual assumptions is the headline in (4) (Section 11.1.3, repeated here for convenience): (4) PM turns up for meeting. (Metro, August 11, 2022)

Headlines raise high expectations of relevance. To satisfy those expectations, (4) should be more relevant than anything else published in the newspaper that day. Yet a prime minister is expected to turn up to meetings as part of his regular prime-ministerial duties, and in normal circumstances the fact that Boris Johnson had turned up to a meeting should not be relevant enough to qualify as headline news.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.012 Published online by Cambridge University Press

11 Relevance Theory and Context

At the time this headline was published, Boris Johnson had agreed in principle to resign but stayed on as prime minister for several months while the search for a successor went on. During this period, he held several farewell parties, arranged a series of photo opportunities, and went on honeymoon, but failed to make the sort of decisions a prime minister is expected to make at a time of national crisis. This provides a clue to the sort of context the headline writer was trying to evoke: one in which Boris Johnson’s neglect of his primeministerial duties was so egregious that even his turning up to a single meeting would be more relevant than anything else worth publishing that day. This headline might thus be seen as a case of “layering” in communication, where an ostensive act on one level becomes the object of a second-order communicative intention (Sperber and Wilson 1987: 751; Clark 1996: chapter 12). By behaving on one level as if it went without saying that the Prime Minister had been grossly negligent, the headline writer communicates, on another level, a degree of contempt that would have been hard to express overtly (for further discussion of the treatment of context in relevance theory, see Mazzone 2015; Assimakopoulos 2017).

11.4 Concluding Remarks In this chapter I have outlined a relevance-theoretic account of how hearers more often than not find the right contextual information to use in interpreting an utterance, and thus succeed in recognizing the speaker’s meaning. The particular problem for pragmatics is that there is no principled limit on the type of information that may be required, raising doubts about whether a robust theory of context is achievable at all. This problem becomes more tractable given two assumptions: first, that the human cognitive system tends to be geared to the search for relevance, and second, that speakers want their intentions to be recognized, are actively helping the hearer to recognize them and would acknowledge them if asked. It is then possible to envisage a relevanceguided comprehension heuristic by which tentative hypotheses about explicit content, context and intended implications are mutually adjusted, with each other and with the expectation of relevance, until a pragmatically satisfactory overall interpretation is reached. Relevance Theory is a result of many collaborations over the years and is still developing. On possible directions for future research, see Sperber and Wilson (2015); Sperber (2018); Scott et al. (2019); Wilson and Carston (2019); Heintz and Scott-Phillips (2022); Wharton et al. (2022).

References Allan, K., and Jaszczolt, K., eds. (2012). The Cambridge Handbook of Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.012 Published online by Cambridge University Press

263

264

DEIRDRE WILSON

Allott, N. (2018). Conversational implicature. In M. Aronoff (ed.), Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI:10.1093/acrefore/ 9780199384655.013.205. Allott, N, (2019). Scientific tractability and relevance theory. In K. Scott, B. Clark, and R. Carston (eds.), Relevance, Pragmatics and Interpretation (pp. 29–41). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Allott, N., and Wilson, D. (2021). Chomsky and pragmatics. In N. Allott, T. Lohndal, and G. Rey (eds.), A Companion to Chomsky (pp. 433–447). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley– Blackwell. Ariel, M. (2002). The demise of a unique concept of literal meaning. Journal of Pragmatics, 34, 361–402. Assimakopoulos, S. (2017). Context selection in relevance theory. In J. Blochowiak, C. Grisot, S. Durrleman, and C. Laenzlinger (eds.), Formal Models in the Study of Language: Applications in Interdisciplinary Contexts (pp. 221–242). Cham: Springer. Atlas, J. (2000). Logic, Meaning, and Conversation: Semantical Underdeterminacy, Implicature, and Their Interface. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bezuidenhout, A. (2016). What properly belongs to grammar: A response to Lepore and Stone. Inquiry, 59, 175–194. Cappelen, H., and Lepore, E. (2005). Insensitive Semantics: A Defense of Semantic Minimalism and Speech Act Pluralism. Oxford: Blackwell. Carston, R. (1995). Quantity maxims and scalar implicature. Lingua, 96, 213–244. Carston, R. (1998). Informativeness, relevance, and scalar implicature. In R. Carston and S. Uchida (eds.), Relevance Theory: Applications and Implications (pp. 179–236). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Carston, R. (2002). Thoughts and Utterances: The Pragmatics of Explicit Communication. Oxford: Blackwell. Carston, R. (2012). Metaphor and the literal–non-literal distinction. In K. Allan and K. Jaszczolt (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Pragmatics (pp. 469–492). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Carston, R. (2016). Linguistic conventions and the role of pragmatics. Mind and Language, 31, 612–624. Carston, R., and Hall, A. (2012). Implicature and explicature. In H. J. Schmid (ed.), Cognitive Pragmatics (pp. 47–84). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Chierchia, G. (2004). Scalar implicatures, polarity phenomena and the syntax/pragmatics interface. In A. Belletti (ed.), Structures and Beyond (pp. 39–103). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chomsky, N. (1992). Language and interpretation: Philosophical reflections and empirical enquiry. In J. Earman (ed.), Inference, Explanation and Other Frustrations: Essays in the Philosophy of Science (pp. 99–128). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Clark, B. (2013). Relevance Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clark, H, (1996). Using Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Clark, H., and Marshall, A. (1981). Definite reference and mutual knowledge. In A. Joshi, B. Webber, and I. Sag (eds.), Elements of Discourse Understanding (pp. 10–63). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Csibra, G. (2010). Recognizing communicative intentions in infancy. Mind and Language, 25, 141–168. Csibra, G., and Gergely, G. (2009). Natural pedagogy. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13, 148–153.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.012 Published online by Cambridge University Press

11 Relevance Theory and Context

Dupuy, L., Van der Henst, J.-B., Cheylus, A., and Reboul, A. (2016). Context in generalized conversational implicatures: The case of some. Frontiers in Psychology, 7(381), March 22. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00381. Eilan, N., Hoerl, C., McCormack, T., and Roessler, J., eds. (2005). Joint Attention: Communication and Other Minds. Oxford: Oxford University Press. von Fintel, K. (2008). What is presupposition accommodation, again? Philosophical Perspectives, 22: 137–170. Fodor, J. (1983). Modularity of Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Garcia-Carpintero, M. (2016). Accommodating presuppositions. Topoi, 35, 37–44. Gibbs, R. (2017). Experimental pragmatics. In Y. Huang (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Pragmatics (pp. 310–325). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Geurts, B. (2010). Quantity Implicatures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grice, H. P. (1957). Meaning. Philosophical Review, 66: 377–388. Repr. in Grice (1989), pp. 213–223. Grice, H. P. (1967). Logic and conversation. William James Lectures, Harvard University. Repr. in Grice (1989), pp. 1–143. Grice, H. P. (1969). Utterer’s meaning and intentions, Philosophical Review, 78, 147–177. Repr. in Grice (1989), pp. 86–116. Grice, H. P. (1989). Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Harris, D. (2017). Review of Imagination and Convention: Distinguishing Grammar and Inference in Language by E. Lepore and M. Stone. Philosophical Review, 26, 554–558. Heintz, C., and Scott-Phillips, T. (2022). Expression unleashed: The evolutionary and cognitive foundations of human communication. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Jan. 5. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X22000012. Hirschberg, J. (1991). A Theory of Scalar Implicature. New York: Garland. Horn, L. (1984). Toward a new taxonomy for pragmatic inference: Q-based and R-based implicature. In D. Schiffrin (ed.), Meaning, Form, and Use in Context: Linguistic Applications (pp. 11–42). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Horn, L. (2004). Implicature. In L. Horn and G. Ward (eds.), The Handbook of Pragmatics (pp. 3–28). Oxford: Blackwell. Horn, L. and Ward, G., eds. (2004). The Handbook of Pragmatics. Oxford: Blackwell. Huang, Y. (2017). The Oxford Handbook of Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lepore, E., and Stone, M. (2010). Against metaphorical meaning. Topoi, 29, 165–180. Lepore, E., and Stone, M. (2015). Imagination and Convention: Distinguishing Grammar and Inference in Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Levinson, S. (2000). Presumptive Meanings: The Theory of Generalized Conversational Implicatures. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Lewis, D. (1969). Convention. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lewis, D. (1979). Scorekeeping in a language game. Journal of Philosophical Logic, 8: 339–359. Repr. in Lewis (1983), pp. 233–249. Lewis, D. (1983). Philosophical Papers. Oxford University Press. Lycan, W. (1995). Philosophy of language. In R. Audi (ed.), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (pp. 586–589). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mazzone, M. (2015). Constructing the context through goals and schemata: Top-down processes in comprehension and beyond. Frontiers in Psychology, May 19. https://doi .org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00651.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.012 Published online by Cambridge University Press

265

266

DEIRDRE WILSON

Meibauer, J. (2012). What is a context? Theoretical and empirical evidence. In R. Finkbeiner, J. Meibauer, and P. Schumacher (eds.), What Is a Context? Linguistic Approaches and Challenges (pp. 9–32). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Noveck, I. (2018). Experimental Pragmatics: The Making of a Cognitive Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Noveck, I., and Sperber, D. (2007). The why and how of experimental pragmatics: The case of “scalar inferences.” In N. Burton-Roberts (ed.), Pragmatics (pp. 184–212). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Recanati, F. (2004). Literal Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Roberts, C. (2015). Accommodation in a language game. In B. Loewer and J. Schaffer (eds.), A Companion to David Lewis (pp. 345–366). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell. Schulze, C., and Tomasello, M. (2015). 18-month-olds comprehend indirect communicative acts. Cognition, 136, 91–98. Scott, K., Clark, B. and Carston, R., eds. (2019). Relevance, Pragmatics and Interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Searle, J. (1978). Literal meaning. Erkenntnis, 13, 207–224. Smith, N. V. (1982). Mutual Knowledge. London: Academic Press. Southgate, V., Chevallier, C., and Csibra, G. (2009). Sensitivity to communicative relevance tells young children what to imitate. Developmental Science, 12, 1013–1019. Sperber, D. (2005). Modularity and relevance: How can a massively modular mind be flexible and context-sensitive? In P. Carruthers, S. Lawrence, and S. Stich (eds.), The Innate Mind: Structure and Content (pp. 53–68). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sperber, D. (2018). Rethinking ostension, (1) and (2). Dan Sperber’s blog, cognitionand culture.net. Sperber, D. (2021). Rethinking common ground. Conference presentation, MK40: Common knowledge, common ground and context in communication. University College London. Sperber, D., and Wilson, D. (1986/1995). Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell. Sperber, D., and Wilson, D. (1987). Précis of Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 10, 697–751. Sperber, D., and Wilson, D. (1990). Spontaneous deduction and mutual knowledge. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 13, 179–184. Sperber, D., and Wilson, D. (1995). Postface to D. Sperber and D. Wilson (1995), Relevance: Communication and Cognition, 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell. . Sperber, D., and Wilson, D. (2002). Pragmatics, modularity and mindreading. Mind and Language, 17, 3–26. Repr. in Wilson and Sperber (2012), pp. 261–278. Sperber, D., and Wilson, D. (2005). Pragmatics. In F. Jackson and M. Smith (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy (pp. 468–501). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Repr. in Wilson and Sperber (2012), pp. 1–27. Sperber, D., and Wilson, D. (2008). A deflationary account of metaphors. In R. Gibbs (ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought (pp. 84–105). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sperber, D., and Wilson, D. (2015). Beyond speaker’s meaning. Croatian Journal of Philosophy, 15, 117–149. Stalnaker, R. (1999). Context and Content: Essays on Intentionality in Speech and Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stalnaker, R, (2002). Common ground. Linguistics and Philosophy, 25, 701–721.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.012 Published online by Cambridge University Press

11 Relevance Theory and Context

Stojnić, U. (2021). Context and Coherence: The Logic and Grammar of Prominence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Van der Henst, J.-B., and Sperber, D. (2004). Testing the cognitive and communicative principles of relevance. In I. Noveck and D. Sperber (eds.), Experimental Pragmatics (pp. 141–171). Basingstoke: Palgrave. Repr. in Wilson and Sperber (2012), pp. 279–306. Van der Henst, J.-B., Sperber, D., and Politzer, G. (2002). When is a conclusion worth deriving? A relevance-based analysis of determinate relational problems. Thinking and Reasoning, 8, 1–20. Wharton, T., Jagoe, C., and Wilson, D., eds. (2022). Special issue, Relevance Theory: New Horizons. Journal of Pragmatics, 124. Wilson, D. (2017). Relevance theory. In Y. Huang (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Pragmatics (pp. 79–100). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wilson, D. (2019). Relevance theory. In M. Aronoff (ed.), Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/ 9780199384655.013.201. Wilson, D. (2022). Communication, comprehension, and interpretation. In H. Colston, T. Matlock, and G. Steen (eds.), Dynamism in Metaphor and Beyond (pp. 143–155). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Wilson, D., and Carston, R. (2019). Pragmatics and the challenge of “nonpropositional” effects. Journal of Pragmatics, 145, 31–38. Wilson, D., and Sperber, D. (2002). Truthfulness and relevance. Mind, 111, 583–632. Repr. in Wilson and Sperber (2012), pp. 47–83. Wilson, D., and Sperber, D. (2004). Relevance theory. In L. Horn and G. Ward (eds.), The Handbook of Pragmatics (pp. 607–632). Oxford: Blackwell. Zufferey, S., Moeschler, J., and Reboul, A. (2019). Implicatures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.012 Published online by Cambridge University Press

267

12 The Interplay of Linguistic, Conceptual, and Encyclopedic Knowledge in Meaning Construction and Comprehension Istvan Kecskes 12.1 Introduction Linguistics research has always been characterized by separatist and synergistic endeavors. The debate is about the basic question of whether language is a relatively independent cognitive faculty or an essential part of overall cognitive development. Recent events point to the fact that synergetic endeavors are receiving more attention than ever before. Current debate has been not about the legitimacy of meaning and performance research (usage), but about the extent to which grammar-research and usage-research can be combined, and what role communication plays in shaping grammar. In other words, whether one can and/or needs to support the other, or they should not interact at all. Linguists have never denied that there is a link between structure and usage. Chomsky (1975: 56) wrote that “surely there are significant connections between structure and function”: So this has never been in doubt. Searle (1979) argued that ‘‘it is reasonable to suppose the needs of communication influenced [language] structure.” “I agree,” said Chomsky (1975: 56–58). Newmeyer (2003) claimed that mental grammar contributes to language use, but usage is not represented in the grammar itself. Knowledge of grammatical structure is only one of many systems that underlie usage. Recent linguistic research (e.g., Hauser et al. 2002; Pinker and Jackendoff 2005) differentiates between aspects of language that are special to language code (“Narrow Language Faculty,” NLF hereafter) and the faculty of language in its entirety, including parts that are shared with other psychological abilities found elsewhere in cognition (“Broad Language Faculty,” BLF hereafter). The

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.013 Published online by Cambridge University Press

12 Linguistic, Conceptual and Encyclopedic Knowledge

BLF (All Mechanisms Involved in Language)

NLF (System of Signs)

Figure 12.1 Recent linguistic theory of language

system of signs

conceptual base sociocultural background Figure 12.2 Kecskes’ definition of language

lexicon can be considered as an interface that ties NLF to the other elements of the BLF. See Figure 12.1. Kecskes’ definition (2013) of language attempts to pull the two sides together as follows: “Language is a system of signs operated by a conceptual base that is the reflection of the socio-cultural background in which the system of signs is put to use.” This definition emphasizes the unique relationship of the sociocultural background (BLF) with the system of signs (NLF) through the conceptual base (see Figure 12.2). So, the question is how these three factors: system of sign, sociocultural background, and conceptual base interact with one another.

12.2 Sociocultural Background Knowledge Language can never be all-inclusive to convey every aspect of meaning. Gumperz argued that, as a consequence, some combination of “practical reasoning” and “unstated, taken-for-granted background knowledge” is needed to

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.013 Published online by Cambridge University Press

269

270

ISTVAN KECSKES

fill in what is left unsaid (Gumperz 2001: 216). So what is this “unstated, takenfor-granted background knowledge”? It is sociocultural background knowledge that comprises sociocultural practices and experiences that a member of a speech community (temporary or relatively stable) is and has been exposed to and uses to make sense of the world around him/her. All this is reflected in core common ground, collective salience, and beliefs for individuals in a given speech community, which has a profound effect on language behavior of speech community members. The more homogeneous and stable (relatively) a speech community is, the more significant the effect of the core common ground and collective salience is. Conversely, the more diverse a speech community is, the more limited the reliance on core common ground and collective salience is, the more is there a need for co-construction of common ground. In other words, smooth communication is hardly possible without some, at least, minimal common ground. Speech community members gain sociocultural knowledge from having been and being acculturated in their speech community. This is the basis for core common ground and collective salience that help speech community members to behave as insiders in the community. If this is lacking, or limited, interlocutors may feel like outsiders, as in the case of intercultural communication where interlocutors do not feel and, most of the time, do not want to feel like insiders of an English L1 speaking community. The following conversation between a Korean student and a Chinese student demonstrates this very clearly.1 (1) K:

CH: K: CH: K: CH: K:

CH: K:

And then language problem. Sometimes I obviously look like a foleign . . . foreign person . . . foreigner here . . . so they assume I don’t speak English so they sometimes . . . I don’t know . . . they sometimes don’t understand what I’m saying . . . even though I’m speaking English. It hurts me a lot . . . I don’t know. Could you follow them? Of course. But they find it hard to follow you? Mhmm I don’t know why. I think it’s because of my . . . how I look like you know. I don’t know it hurts me a lot. I don’t think it matters very much because just for your physical appearance. Did you try slowing down your space? Yes eventually they understand I can speak English but still in their mind they have strong strategy . . . I mean . . . I’m sorry . . . stereotypes prejudice like . . . you look foreign. Foreigner. And you probably don’t speak English so they don’t even bother themselves to speak to me.

Both the Korean student and the Chinese student express their frustration about not feeling like members of the Albany speech community in which they have been living. They talk about their physical appearance, their language use 1

Example from Kecskes (2019a).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.013 Published online by Cambridge University Press

12 Linguistic, Conceptual and Encyclopedic Knowledge

and the prejudice of some members of the speech community. What frustrates them most is being misunderstood. As the Korean student says: “they sometimes don’t understand what I’m saying . . . even though I’m speaking English.” Although he uses the same code system as native speakers do, something is still missing. This “something” is the other side of the language use: The sociocultural background knowledge that would help him use the right intonation, select the preferred words in a given context, use the appropriate situation-bound utterances, understand implications and contextualization cues, including both verbal and nonverbal, and so on. Broadly speaking, everything that goes with a language minus the code system can be considered sociocultural background knowledge. Nevertheless, the nature and functioning of this knowledge – what exactly it includes and how people access and activate the appropriate knowledge – in a given conversational moment is still not clear and is under investigation.

12.3 The Relationship of Sociocultural Background Knowledge to Linguistic Knowledge and Conceptual Knowledge 12.3.1 Understanding the Three Knowledges One of the most complicated issues of present-day linguistics is the relationship of the three knowledges: linguistic knowledge, conceptual knowledge, and encyclopedic knowledge. Language philosophy, theoretical linguistics, cognitive linguistics, computational linguistics, and pragmatics have been addressing this issue from different perspectives. Kecskes’ definition of language (see above) is based on the relationship between these three knowledges. There are three important factors in that definition: system of signs, conceptual base, and sociocultural background. It would be logical to assign linguistic knowledge to the system of signs, conceptual knowledge to the conceptual base, and encyclopedic knowledge to the sociocultural background. This, however, is not that simple. Goddard is probably right when he said: “knowledge of all kinds is integrated in the mind to such an extent that it does not make any sense to partition it into two distinct realms” (1998: 15). But we still need to partition knowledge if we want to understand how language works. Also, this may help us understand better what happens in intercultural interactions when not all these knowledges are equally available. Some works in theoretical linguistics (e.g., Gruber 1985; Kiefer 1990; Bierwisch and Schreuder 1992) talked about the need to distinguish between three types of knowledge: linguistic knowledge, which, roughly speaking, concerns the core meaning (mostly literal meaning) of lexical items, conceptual knowledge, which has to do with the possible modifications, conceptualizations of the core meaning in various actual situational contexts, and encyclopedic knowledge, which comprises the rest, that is, world knowledge that is associated with a word, but which is not immediately relevant to linguistic structure. Take, for instance, the lexical item plate whose core meaning is something like ‘a flat

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.013 Published online by Cambridge University Press

271

272

ISTVAN KECSKES

dish.’ The fact that this lexical item can be used also as a non-physical entity, as in the sentences: “I have too much on my plate” or “dinner is twenty dollars a plate,” belongs to our conceptual knowledge. Actually, conceptual knowledge comprises the different possible senses of the lexical item. Everything beyond that, like the knowledge that plate is used to eat food from, that it is usually made of porcelain, metal, or some artificial material, and it is usually oval or round belong to our encyclopedic knowledge. Another example can be the verb shoot. Its core meaning is ‘kill or wound (a person or animal) with a bullet or arrow.’ Our conceptual knowledge comprises different other possible senses of the label “shoot,” such as “to shoot questions at someone,” or fling (“The volcano shot lava into the air”) or to direct suddenly or swiftly as in “He shot a smile at his girlfriend.” At the same time, there are some things that we know about the word shoot which, however, do not play any role (at least most of the time) in its semantic interpretation. Beyond what was said above, we know that we need an instrument or tool to execute the action shoot, like a weapon or a volcano or metaphorically a laugh. We also know that shoot presupposes a swift and rapid move. This approach to three different knowledges makes sense, but how does this relate to what we call “sociocultural background knowledge”? Can sociocultural background knowledge be equated with encyclopedic knowledge, as is usually done in some of the existing literature (e.g., Fillmore 1982; Croft and Cruse 2004; Evans 2006)? One can argue that sociocultural background knowledge comprises everything we know about the world. So, should we distinguish conceptual knowledge from encyclopedic knowledge, or should we handle them as one entity? The answer to this question is not straightforward, but we can look at intercultural rather than L1 communication for an answer. We know that linguistic knowledge is relatively easy to define: that is coded, and (relatively) standardized. Languages do not differ that much with respect to core meanings of lexical items denoting basic objects and actions in the world, but they may exhibit essential differences as to conceptual knowledge and, to some extent, encyclopedic knowledge. What the core meaning of the verb cut denotes ‘make an opening, incision, or wound in something with a sharp-edged tool or object’ exists in many languages. However, the various conceptualizations of that action are at odds in different languages. Take, for instance, cut to the chase, which indeed is a very American way to mean ‘make your point.’ Likewise, there is no English translation for Hungarian megvágtam egy kis pénzzel, which means ‘I squeezed some money out of him’ in which the literal equivalent of cut (vág) is used.

12.3.2 Approaches to Separating Linguistic Knowledge from Conceptual Knowledge Linguistic theories (e.g., generative linguistics and lexical semantics) usually focus on and discuss linguistic knowledge and encyclopedic knowledge. Linguistic knowledge (dictionary knowledge) is supposed to cover the

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.013 Published online by Cambridge University Press

12 Linguistic, Conceptual and Encyclopedic Knowledge

idiosyncrasies of particular words, whereas encyclopedic knowledge covers everything regarding the underlying concepts. In cognitive linguistics, however, semantic representations which constitute the semantic pole of a linguistic sign are equated with “conventionalized conceptualizations” (Langacker 1988: 94). This view integrates encyclopedic knowledge into the lexicon. So, there is no separate linguistic knowledge and encyclopedic knowledge. In cognitive linguistics, meaning emerging from language use is a function of the activation of conceptual knowledge structures as guided by context. Consequently, there is no principled distinction between semantics and pragmatics (e.g., Fauconnier 1997; Evans 2006; Paolucci 2021). Thus, language is seen as a repository of world knowledge and a structured collection of meaningful categories which help us deal with new experiences and store information about old ones (Geeraerts 1997). It can be deduced that our linguistic knowledge is rooted in our experience with the world; this is what language in use expresses. So, if language is a system for categorization of the world, one can argue that there does not seem to be any need to postulate a systemic and structural level of meaning that differs from the level where world knowledge is associated with linguistic forms. However, each language categorizes the same world out there differently (see Van Olmen and Tantucci 2022). Americans make money, Hungarians search for money (pénzt keres), and Russians work for money (зарабатывать). What is more, Slobin (1997) argued that language is a transmitter of real-world experiences and that these experiences are filtered through language into verbalized events. If that were not the case, second language speakers/learners would not face the constant problem of linguistic and conceptual differences in Chinese English, Bulgarian English, Indian English, German English, etc. The differences between languages are most significant at the conceptual level. There is no one-toone relationship between a word and a concept in languages, and especially not across languages. This is where the different world views of different speech communities are conventionalized and developed into a relatively standardized code system (cf. He 2021; Hopkinson 2021). That is the main reason why intercultural communicators consider linguistic knowledge as relatively similar in each variety of English, no matter what their L1 is. This is why they treat the code system as their core common ground. In a way everybody who speaks English uses the same code system. For instance, English L2 users all know at a particular level of proficiency the semantics of the word patronize – to act as a patron of support – such as in the sentence “they patronized the local stores.” However, what not all L2 speakers may know is the conceptual load that is attached to this word depending on its direct object. If the direct object is inanimate – take, for instance, the sentence above – there is no problem: the meaning is neutral or positive. But if the direct object is animate the meaning becomes negative. It refers to a condescending treatment, some kind of superiority as in the following encounter: (2) Kelly: Bill:

I am sure you did your best. The accident was not your fault. Please do not patronize me. I will take the responsibility.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.013 Published online by Cambridge University Press

273

274

ISTVAN KECSKES

Bill does not like Kelly’s patronizing tone. He is fully aware that he was wrong and is ready to take the responsibility. In most cases, linguistic knowledge in English is available for the L2 speakers (depending on their proficiency), while conceptual knowledge may or may not be accessible.2 This is where the major difference lies between L1 use and L2 use. While speakers in L1 seek and establish common ground on the conceptual level, L2 speakers usually do that on the linguistic level. The separation of linguistic knowledge and conceptual knowledge is quite clear in L2 (e.g., Kecskes 2003; Baker 2015). Of course, this does not mean that common ground cannot be established at the conceptual level in L2 communication. In fact, what happens is that the more time a temporary speech community spends together the more common ground is created at the conceptual level, just as in L1. Cognitive linguists have attempted to keep linguistic knowledge separate from conceptual knowledge. Bierwisch (1981) argued that there is a clear distinction between a word’s purely linguistic meaning and the interpretation that a word may have relative to conceptual knowledge (cf. Bierwisch 1981; Bierwisch and Schreuder 1992; Taylor 2000). This two-level model distinguishes between a linguistic-semantic level of meaning and an essentially nonlinguistic, conceptual level of interpretation. Encyclopedic knowledge is provided only in the act of interpreting the word in its context, while the word meaning itself is underdetermined with respect to its possible interpretations in different kinds of context. This position seriously constrains polysemy in the mental lexicon and relegates it to the conceptual level. So, words have a number of meanings because of their various possible conceptual interpretations. It could be argued that the goal of dictionary knowledge (linguistic knowledge) is only to collect all possible interpretations under a unitary semantic entry. This corroborates Taylor’s point that “on the two-level model, interpretation of an expression emerges through the interaction of the unitary semantic representation with conceptual information, relative to a context” (2000: 130). Consequently, the dictionary knowledge (linguistic knowledge) – encyclopedic knowledge controversy opposes two extreme conceptions of word definitions. According to the dictionary approach, a word is described in terms of linguistic elements only, without recourse to world knowledge, whereas an encyclopedic definition includes “an indication of the different species or different stages of the object or process denoted by the word, the main types of behavior of this object or process” (Mel’cuk and Zholkovsky 1984: 88). Let me highlight that the debate on the separation of the conceptual and linguistic-lexical level does not necessarily go on between generativists and cognitivists, although it concerns the basic difference between the two perspectives. Rather, it involves linguists from both sides. For instance, Bierwisch is a generativist, and Wierzbicka is a cognitivist, still they are on the same side 2

This may depend on factors such as frequency of occurrence or noticing.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.013 Published online by Cambridge University Press

12 Linguistic, Conceptual and Encyclopedic Knowledge

although their reasons are unalike. Also, several researchers, who are considered as cognitive linguists, argued for keeping lexical semantics separate from conceptual semantics. Haiman, for example, claimed that while theoretically untenable, the distinction between dictionaries and encyclopedias has “the happy property of working very well in practice” (1980: 355). Similarly, Gibbs (1996) claimed that cognitive linguists would not argue against the idea that there is a mental lexicon that might be independently accessed during sentence processing. In his view, part of the confusion about the role of cognitive structure in language use and processing results from the failure to distinguish between different levels at which cognition and language interact. Moreover, Wierzbicka (1996) strongly believes that word meaning can and has to be defined at the linguistic (lexical) level. She argued that the acquisition of another language demonstrates very well how important lexical semantics is. She said that “for anyone seriously trying to learn another language and understand another culture, the proposition that words cannot be defined can hardly be anything but bad news (p. 256). Also, she said that the “belief that a dictionary definition represents nothing other than a selection from a (real or imaginary) encyclopedic entry, with the choice being determined by practical considerations and having no theoretical justification, leads to stagnation in lexical semantics” (p. 336). Wierzbicka clearly makes the distinction between linguistic knowledge and encyclopedic knowledge for she thinks that linguistic knowledge is essentially shared between all speakers of a particular language, while encyclopedic (real-world) knowledge is not. She pointed out that there is linguistic evidence that the human mind itself draws a distinction between a mental dictionary and a mental encyclopedia (p. 344). On that account, the nature of available linguistic evidence is summarized by Taylor (2000: 16) who argued that acquisition is not a process of building up a concept from its constituent parts, but it consists in the gradual elaboration of a knowledge network. Another important observation comes from Harnad (1990) who said that “once one has the grounded set of elementary symbols provided by a taxonomy of names (and the iconic and categorical representations that give content to the names and allow them to pick out the objects they identify), the rest of the symbol strings of a natural language can be generated by symbol composition alone, and they will all inherit the intrinsic grounding of the elementary set” (pp. 343–344). This implies that higher-order symbols can be interpreted without direct acquaintance with reality. We should not think, however, that these higher-order symbols are not grounded in experience at all. They, together with their underlying symbolic representations, are derived from the sensory representations and thus indirectly grounded in experience. Actually, the real issue here is not whether the content of lexical units is grounded in experience or not, because in most cases they are grounded in experience either directly or indirectly. What is important for us is that linguistic symbols can entirely be cut off from their original source and live the life of their own, which is independent from the conceptual system to a particular extent and from a particular perspective. Just think about

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.013 Published online by Cambridge University Press

275

276

ISTVAN KECSKES

this issue from a second language perspective. Although L2 users have access to the symbols (words) in English, they have limited direct experience with the target language reality in which those symbols are grounded for the native speakers. Consequently, English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) speakers may have linguistic knowledge but lack – or have only limited access to –conceptual knowledge. Based on the instances of mono- and multilingual development, it would be far-reaching to claim that linguistic units (words) reflect specific, autonomous linguistic knowledge that is separate from various types of conceptual knowledge. However, it might very well be that some linguistic knowledge that is attached to the word form is partly autonomous from the rest of our conceptual system (see Gibbs 1996; Kecskes 2003, 2019b, 2021). We can take the expression chicken out as an example. The basic meaning of the expression is ‘to decide not to do something because you are too frightened.’ No actual situational context can cancel the negative conceptual load attached to the expression. For example, in the utterance “at the last minute Sally chickened out of the race,” no contextual support is needed for the expression to call upon the negative conceptual load. Consequently, we can say that the conceptual load is already tied to the semantics of the lexical unit. In other words, the conceptual load becomes its word-specific semantic property. In that regard, Croft and Wood argued that “it is not the case that any time we think we must conceptualize our experience the way that our language requires us to. But it is the case that any time we express our thoughts in language, we must conceptualize our experience in the way that our language requires us to. Cognition may be linguistically neutral, but language is not semantically neutral” (2000: 55). Slobin (1991) also made a similar point when he described “thinking for speaking” as the appropriate domain for the influence of language on thought. The issue here is not necessarily whether language influences thought or not, but to what extent. The world is always given to us under some construal for our purposes. Thus, the remaining question is: How much of this construal is provided by the language we speak?

12.3.3 The Multilingual Perspective To answer this question, we must go back to Wierzbicka’s thought which reflects a second language perspective. She argued that basically the process of second language learning is the proof that the proposition that words cannot be defined is wrong. She rejects the belief that a dictionary definition represents nothing other than a selection from a (real or imaginary) encyclopedic entry, with the choice being determined by practical considerations and having no theoretical justification. Wierzbicka makes the distinction between linguistic knowledge and encyclopedic knowledge because she is convinced that linguistic knowledge is essentially shared between all speakers of a particular language, while encyclopedic (real-world) knowledge is not. So far, she is right, but she does not clarify the nature of what she calls

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.013 Published online by Cambridge University Press

12 Linguistic, Conceptual and Encyclopedic Knowledge

“encyclopedic knowledge” because she equates it with what I have called sociocultural background knowledge. So, the problem is not solved yet. But we are on the right track because we are using a multilingual view, the perspective of L2 or Lx speakers. When bringing a multilingual view into the debate, we should say that the relationship between the three knowledge types is way more complex than just a simple trichotomy. The main problem is that world knowledge is available for human beings in two ways: (1) A part of world knowledge is encapsulated in the lexical items that we use in a language. That is why cognitive linguists argue that it does not make sense to separate linguistic knowledge from encyclopedic knowledge. In a way they are right because when we use a word, that triggers what they call linguistic knowledge (grammatical information about the word, its relations to other words, synonymy-antonymy, etc.) as well as encyclopedic knowledge, which comprises what Melcuk and Zholkovsky (1984) called an indication of the different species or different stages of the object or process denoted by the word, the main types of behavior of this object or process. This kind of encyclopedic knowledge sounds like something encoded in the word which we called “conceptual knowledge.” But, then, where is the other part of world knowledge that is not encoded in the lexical items? (2) It looks like the “second” type of world knowledge is not directly connected with our language system; rather, it comprises behavior practices, models, and social frames that are called upon when we use a language. We will take a closer look at these two sides of sociocultural background knowledge – conceptual knowledge and encyclopedic knowledge – in the following section.

12.4 A Possible Model of Knowledge Distribution 12.4.1 The Relationship of Three Knowledges in the Model I propose a model in which we have the linguistic knowledge on one side, and the sociocultural background knowledge (world knowledge) on the other side. There is constant interaction between the two sides in any language use. For analytic reasons, within the sociocultural background knowledge we should distinguish between conceptual knowledge and encyclopedic knowledge, as Figure 12.3 shows. According to this model, meaning is constructed in the dynamic interplay of actual situational context and lexical items, with the context representing the actual, present, situational, ever-changing side of sociocultural background and the lexical item(s) embodying previous experiences and relations in the

Linguistic knowledge

Sociocultural background knowledge conceptual knowledge ---- encyclopedic knowledge

Figure 12.3 Conceptual knowledge and encyclopedic knowledge

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.013 Published online by Cambridge University Press

277

278

ISTVAN KECSKES

sociocultural background (see Kecskes 2003, 2013a). This is how the three knowledges are intertwined and function together. The lexical items with their semantic properties (linguistic knowledge) represent prior reoccurring experience (conceptual knowledge), and the actual situational context triggers the other part of world knowledge that we previously called encyclopedic knowledge. The difference between the two types of sociocultural background knowledge is that the conceptual knowledge part is immediately tied to linguistic knowledge, while the other type of sociocultural background knowledge (encyclopedic knowledge) is called upon as needed in the actual language use. Second language users have the least problem with linguistic knowledge that is mainly reflected in their language proficiency. Linguistic knowledge is learnable both systematically (schools, institutions) or asystematically (natural environment). It represents core knowledge that L2 interlocutors share and rely on, no matter which variety of English (Chinese, German, French, Russian, etc.) they speak. This linguistic core knowledge gives some core common ground for the interlocutors to rely on. However, conceptual knowledge is different. The problem is that conceptual knowledge that is tied to the semantics of a lexical item is quite conservative and occasionally seems to be old-fashioned or obsolete because it may be rooted in the past experience of the given speech community (cf. Kecskes 2019a; Werkmann Horvat et al. 2021). Language only partly reflects the actual social world around us because of this delay in conceptual coding. It will take a while for some neologisms such as sharrow (road marking), procott (intentionally buy things), or placemaking to be fully part of common conceptual knowledge. Words with their semantics are needed not only to symbolize concepts but also to stabilize them, keep them tidy, and make them definable. This, however, can only be done if a word or formula has some elements in its meaning that are relatively constant, that is, part of the language system and not totally dependent on actual use and context. So I need to quote Leibniz’s argument: “Si nihil per se concipitur, nihil omnino concipietur,” that is, ‘if nothing can be understood by itself nothing at all can ever be understood (1903: 430).” Human communication would hardly be possible if words did not have any relatively permanent elements in their meaning and meaning formation would only be the matter of online, in-process production. If, however, these relatively constant elements of meaning really exist, cognitive linguists’ claim that word meanings may not apply at all without the supporting cognitive structures and mechanisms becomes questionable (at least to some extent).

12.4.2 Words and Concepts (the Interplay of Linguistic Knowledge and Conceptual Knowledge) The central element of lexical pragmatics is the way we understand the relationship of word and concept, that is, linguistic knowledge and conceptual knowledge. This issue needs a deeper analysis because this is where languages

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.013 Published online by Cambridge University Press

12 Linguistic, Conceptual and Encyclopedic Knowledge

differ from each other, and it is the key to understanding difficulties in L2 and Lx use. The conceptual system and linguistic system are related through the interdependence of concepts and words. Most of the controversy centers around the question of how concepts and words are related to one another. A natural language possesses an inventory of lexical forms, and these are mapped onto the concept network (Cruse 1992: 290). The question is: how does this mapping take place? It is true that concepts are represented by words, but this representation is rather contradictory. The contradiction is caused by two facts. First, there is no one-to-one relationship between the concept and the word: The overall concept usually extends beyond the sections labeled with a word. Second, the semantic domain of a word also contains specific properties which are not present in the concept. As a result, sometimes there are several different lexical routes to one and the same concept. While discussing the relationship between concept and word, a distinction needs to be made between two approaches. Kurt Baldinger described this distinction in the following way: “Semasiology . . . considers the isolated word and the way its meanings are manifested, while onomasiology looks at the designations of a particular concept, that is, at a multiplicity of expressions which form a whole” (1980: 278). The semasiological perspective focuses on the word and explores how concepts (conceptual meanings) are associated with that word. So, semasiology targets polysemy and the multiple applicability of a lexical item. In contrast, the onomasiological approach takes the concept as its starting point and investigates what words can express a particular concept. The subject of onomasiology is synonymy, name-giving, and the selection of an expression from among a number of possible alternatives (cf. Geeraerts 1997). It is clear from this distinction that semasiology refers to processes of meaning, while onomasiology involves naming. As a result of the thought–word interaction in language production, thought usually undergoes several changes as it turns into speech. During this process conceptual categories (concepts) are mapped on linguistic categories (words). Here is an example of how this happens when English as an L2 is used. (3)

A male native speaker of English is having a conversation with a Thai female student. He wants to know whether she likes sports or not. The Thai student initially says she likes “football” and then immediately replaces that with “soccer.” Non-Native Speaker (Thai woman) – Native Speaker (American man) NS: . . . . So do you like sports? NNS: I love sports. NS: What sports do you love? NNS: I love football . . . Ops- in here we call soccer. NS: Oh okay.

When replacing football with soccer, the NNS probably wanted to provide the NS with an accurate identification of the sport she liked. According to collective salience of her culture, the Thai woman used the right label “soccer.”

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.013 Published online by Cambridge University Press

279

280

ISTVAN KECSKES

However, she realized that that label for the concept might not work in the actual situation context for the American man. In addition, she likely anticipated that if NS understood her to be identifying American football, he could ask follow-up questions that NNS would be unable to answer. In the NNS’s mind “football” is the label that has priority based on her L1 experience. However, she realized that for the American the word has another most salient meaning. To avoid misunderstanding, the Thai student changed the word for “soccer” that matched the actual situational context.

12.4.3 Encyclopedic Knowledge Now we need to examine how the uncoded part of sociocultural background knowledge affects language production. In our understanding, encyclopedic knowledge refers not only to extralinguistic information about the world but also to a structured system of knowledge, organized as a network. Rosch’s (1977) schema theory is a theoretical framework which has been developed in the cognitive sciences over the last several decades. The central concept, “schema,” has gone by a number of other names, including “cultural model” (Holland and Quinn 1987; D’Andrade 1992), “frame” (Minsky 1975; Fillmore 1982), “mental model” (Johnson-Laird 1983), “idealized cognitive model” (Lakoff 1987), “folk model” (D’Andrade 1987), and “script” (Schank and Abelson 1977). According to most of these theories, encyclopedic knowledge is mostly represented in cultural models and schemas that provide scenarios or action plans for individuals on how to interpret speech situations and behave in a particular situation or how to interpret the behavior of others in one or another situation. Cultural schemas for social interaction are cognitive structures that contain knowledge for face-to-face interactions in a person’s sociocultural environment. The following encounter between a Hungarian man and three Chinese women illustrates how these cultural models work. (4)

The four people are going into a restaurant in Albany, NY. The Hungarian stops at the desk of the receptionist, while the three Chinese women are walking into the restaurant looking for an empty table. H: Where are you going? CH1: There is a vacant table over there. H: Please wait till we are seated.

According to US customs, when someone walks into a restaurant they have to wait till a member of waiting staff walks them/their party to a table. In China there is a different model: usually (though not always) it is acceptable to occupy whichever table is available. Not knowing the US cultural model, the three Chinese women acted according to their own. I argued before that cultural models provide a kind of reference library for possible plans of action for oneself or possible interpretation of the actions of others (see Kecskes 2013). These models are not learned directly as models but are inferred by each of us from what we see and experience with those other people in our speech

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.013 Published online by Cambridge University Press

12 Linguistic, Conceptual and Encyclopedic Knowledge

community. But what we experience are never the models themselves. What we infer from experience is pieces of information, images, features that keep a model together. What we infer depends directly on what parts of the given scenario are saliently and repetitively present in the messages we experience for us to pull out the regularities on which we will base our construction of the model behind them. Thus, systematic and repeated changes in speech or cultural behavior in one generation will be learned by the next generation as part of the givens of language or culture. The core of cultural models that people in the same speech community share changes diachronically through systematic and repeated shifts that can come from sociopolitical changes, technological changes, environmental changes, and the like. For instance, currently gender-specific expressions such as policeman, chairman, and freshman are replaced by gender-neutral expressions such as police officer, chairperson, and first-year student. Of course, usually there is trouble if people try to force the linguistic system to accept something that is conceptually unfounded. An example can be Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau’s attempt to change mankind for peoplekind. These attempts are the result of a sociopolitical practice that prefers the use of gender-neutral terms in language. Those sociopolitical practices may prevail if the given speech community will find them important to keep and use them repeatedly.

12.5 Sociocultural Background Knowledge in L2 To justify the proposed model, we need to see how it works for L2 and ELF users. Baker (2009) argued that linguistic and cultural forms expressed through ELF are likely to be hybrid, dynamic, and continuously adapting to local needs, global influences, and the demands of communicating across cultures. He lamented that apart from Meierkord’s (2002) study, there is little empirical evidence from ELF settings, and none from expanding circle environments,3 that is specifically concerned with understanding how cultural frames of reference and communicative practices operate in such a liminal manner in intercultural communication through English. The situation has not changed much as we can see in Baker’s new book (2015). It is worth looking at House’s argument (2014) who said that when English is used as a lingua franca for communication, it is in principle neutral with regard to the different sociocultural backgrounds of its users. Kecskes (2019a) argued that House may not be right. Risager (2006) took House’s argument even further. She spoke not only about neutrality of the sociocultural background but also about separation of language and culture. Building on the understanding of dynamism in critical theory, or as Risager views it, the complex and global flow of language and culture, she claimed that from the perspective of users of English as a second or 3

Kachru refers to the “extended circle of English” where English is learned/used as a foreign language such as Russia, Germany, and China.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.013 Published online by Cambridge University Press

281

282

ISTVAN KECSKES

foreign language, languages and cultures can be separated. In order to explain what she means by this, she makes a distinction between cultures and languages in the generic sense and in the differential sense (Risager 2006: 4–5). In the generic or universal sense, language and culture are intertwined in the way that some theories such as linguistic relativity proposed (e.g., Whorf 1939; Gumperz and Levinson 1996). Language is always an enactment and embodiment of culture, so the two cannot be separated. However, Risager believes that when examining specific languages and cultures such as English, in the differential sense, language and culture can be separated. Her main argument is that all languages, and especially international languages such as English or Spanish, can in practice (i.e., during actual instances of use) take on new cultural meanings. She refers to those as languacultures (Risager 2006: 110), which depend on users and context. In this sense “the link between language and culture is created in every new communicative event” (Risager 2006: 185). As a result, a language such as English will have as many languacultures as there are speakers of the language, and in this sense, there is no identifiable culture to which a language is inseparably tied. She goes even further than that. She believes that at the individual psychological level, that is, at the level of an individual’s linguistic competence or resources, language and culture are again inseparable, and develop in tandem based on the individual’s life experiences. She believes that this individual perspective may have led to confusion over the relationship between specific languages and cultures, and consequent claims that languages such as English are in some way directly tied to British or US culture as in strong forms of linguistic relativity (Whorf 1939). What is important for us here is that while maintaining that languages are never culturally neutral for their users, Risager’s approach to the relationship between languages and cultures allows English use in ELF to be separated from the cultures of the inner circle countries. However, this is not quite so if we accept what I suggested earlier: a significant part of inner circle culture (whether it be Australian, American, or British English) is encapsulated in the lexical items in English. So Chinese, German, Russian, Korean, etc. learners/users of English have this conceptual knowledge available to them to a certain extent depending on their proficiency level. So, it is a mistake to suggest that target language culture is separated from the use of English as a lingua franca. The problem is that the ELF interlocutors cannot rely on that conceptual knowledge as the inner circle interlocutors can because it is unknown how much of this conceptual knowledge of inner circle English the outer and expanding circle interlocutors share. This is especially true for formulaic language, as the example below clearly demonstrates. (5)

Jianwei, Mary, Andy, and Liya are sitting at a table and eating. Jianwei: Can I eat that last piece of sandwich? Liya: Be my guest. Jianwei: But it’s not yours.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.013 Published online by Cambridge University Press

12 Linguistic, Conceptual and Encyclopedic Knowledge

This example shows quite well why we cannot separate inner circle culture from L2 and ELF. There are three non-native speakers and one native speaker at the table. The Chinese student asks for permission to eat the last piece of sandwich. The Russian student uses a formulaic expression to respond, which is a situation-bound utterance, encouraging or allowing someone else to take action like in the following encounter: A: Do you mind if I order another glass of beer? B: Not at all – be my guest. The possessive pronoun my in the set phrase “be my guest” does not necessarily refer to possession. However, the Chinese student in example (5) processes the utterance based on its literal meaning because he may not know the conceptual load of the situation-bound utterance in this figurative use “be my guest.” So, a slight misunderstanding occurs. This issue was discussed by Kramsch from a second language acquisition perspective. Kramsch (1993: 233) viewed second language communication as operating in a “third place” between the users’ first language and culture (L1/C1) and the target language and culture (L2/C2) but being part of neither. She claimed that second languages operate along a ‘‘cultural faultline’’ (p. 205) in which communicative practices are freed from the norms of both L1/C1 and L2/C2, which opens up new perspectives on languages and cultures. Baker (2015) suggested that the notion of liminality, as proposed by Rampton (1995), shares many features with Kramsch’s third places. Rampton studied communication between different ethnic groups within the United Kingdom. He identified ‘‘liminal moments’’ or ‘‘crossings’’ (Rampton 1995: 167) when language users who are not part of a given language community adopt that language for their own purposes or needs at least temporarily. This results in a code-alteration (p. 280) of the L2 by minority or outside users. Rampton argued that such crossings are quite common in the L2 classroom and are a part of L2 teaching and learning practice. Relying on Rampton’s approach, Brumfit (2006) proposed that L2 learning and use can be considered a liminal process that leads users into new areas, in which languages and their cultural codes are unique to each individual and communicative encounter. Baker (2015) emphasized the importance of these approaches and noted that although none of these authors had talked specifically about ELF communication, the notion of third places and liminality have much to offer in highlighting the fluid, dynamic, and novel communicative practices and language–culture connections that might be expected in such contexts. Definitely, both the third space approach and liminality are relevant to our discussion about the interplay of linguistic, conceptual, and encyclopedic knowledge in meaning production and comprehension in ELF. However, the question is whether ELF users do something different from what L1 users do. Seemingly, the answer is “yes.” But this is just the tip of the iceberg. What is beneath is more complex. L1 users rely on the relative, synchronically

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.013 Published online by Cambridge University Press

283

284

ISTVAN KECSKES

available “end-product” of language development4: a relatively coherent system of signs and a relatively coherent sociocultural background knowledge that serves as a support system. This is what LaPolla (2010: 13) claims about language development: Language is the cumulative result of the actions of many individual humans, but their actions are not with the intention to create language; language is the unintended byproduct of their attempts to communicate effectively (constrain the addressee’s inferential process effectively) on an individual level. It forms as if guided by some invisible hand, much the way economies and paths in fields develop.

But, how is that related to ELF? We should think about the following: ELF users enter into a communicative encounter with their full knowledge of L1, different levels of linguistic, conceptual, and encyclopedic knowledge of L2 and an individual understanding of the actual situational context. From there, they start the cumulative process, which is usually very short: to put together what they have so as to create core common ground that they can rely on while communicating with each other. Although this is a short process (ELF speech communities are only temporary), people generally try to do similar things to what they do in L1, but some of those things are more articulated than in L1. So, ELF users also try to primarily rely on prefabricated language (the idiom principle works), and if they do not have enough of it, they produce new ones. They seek common ground, and if they do not have enough of it, they create some. They try to make sense of the actual situation context, and if that does not fit in their existing repertoire, they co-construct one, and so on and so forth. So one could argue that they create their own variety of ELF for the time they spend together. And in this endeavor, it is linguistic knowledge that helps them most, since that is what they all share to some extent. Conceptual knowledge is mostly co-constructed on the basis of this shared linguistic knowledge.

12.6 Summary In this chapter we discussed the relationship and interplay of three knowledges: linguistic knowledge, conceptual knowledge, and encyclopedic knowledge. A model was proposed in which there is linguistic knowledge on one side, and sociocultural background knowledge (world knowledge) on the other side with constant interaction between the two sides. For analytic reasons, within the sociocultural background knowledge there was a distinction made between conceptual knowledge and encyclopedic knowledge. According to this model, meaning is constructed in the dynamic interplay of actual situational context and prior context encapsulated in lexical items. The context represents the 4

There is no real end-product because language keeps changing.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.013 Published online by Cambridge University Press

12 Linguistic, Conceptual and Encyclopedic Knowledge

actual, present, situational, ever-changing side of sociocultural background, and the lexical item(s) used in the interaction encapsulate previous experiences and relations in the sociocultural background. It was claimed that differences between the three types of knowledges are most visible in L2 or ELF use. Access to the three knowledges represented by the target language is a graded phenomenon for L2 and ELF users, with the most accessible knowledge being the linguistics code, followed by encyclopedic knowledge. L2 interlocutors have the least access to conceptual knowledge tied to the target language. The problem is not just that they do not have enough experience in the target language to develop enough of that type of knowledge, but also that when interlocutors use L2 and ELF they cannot be sure how much of that conceptual knowledge they share with their partners. The interplay of three knowledges requires more research both in L1 and L2 communication not only to further clarify their interrelations but also to analyze the outcome of their interplay in different types of speech communities.

References Baker, W. (2009). The cultures of English as a Lingua Franca. TESOL Quarterly, 43(4), 567–592. Baker, W. (2015). Culture and Identity through English as a Lingua Franca. Boston/ Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Baldinger, K. (1980). Semantic Theory: Towards a Modern Semantics. Oxford: Blackwell. Bierwisch, M. (1981). Basic issues in the development of word meaning. In W. Deutch (ed.), The Child’s Construction of Language (pp. 341–387). London: Academic Press. Bierwisch, M., and Schreuder, R. (1992). From concepts to lexical items. Cognition, 42, 23–60. Brumfit, C. (2006). A European perspective on language as liminality. In C. MarMolinero and P. Stevenson (eds.), Language Ideologies, Policies and Practices. Language and Globalization (pp. 28–43). Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi .org/10.1057/9780230523883_3. Chomsky, N. (1975). The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory. New York: Plenum Press. Croft, W., and Cruse, D. A. (2004). Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge University Press. Croft, W., and Wood, E. J. (2000). Construal operations in linguistics and artificial intelligence. In L. Albertazzi (ed.), Meaning and Cognition: A Multidisciplinary Approach (pp. 51–78). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Cruse, D. A. (1992). Antonymy revisited: Some thoughts on the relationship between words and concepts. In Frames, Fields, and Contrasts (pp. 289–306). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Cruse, D. A. (2002). Language, meaning and sense: semantics. In N. Collinge (ed.), An Encyclopedia of Language (pp. 87–104). London: Routledge. D’Andrade, R. (1987). A folk model of the mind. In D. Holland and N. Quinn (eds.), Cultural Models in Language and Thought (pp. 113–147). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.013 Published online by Cambridge University Press

285

286

ISTVAN KECSKES

D’Andrade, R. (1992). Schemas and motivation. In R. D’Andrade and C. Strauss (eds.), Human Motives and Cultural Models (pp. 23–44). New York: Cambridge University Press. Evans, V. (2006). Lexical concepts, cognitive models and meaning construction. Cognitive Linguistics, 17(4), 491–534. Fauconnier, G. (1997). Mappings in Thought and Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fillmore, C. J. (1982). Frame semantics. In Linguistic Society of Korea (ed.), Linguistics in the Morning Calm (pp. 111–137). Seoul: Hanshin Publishing Co. Geeraerts, D. (1997). Diachronic Prototype Semantics. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Gibbs, R. (1996). Why many concepts are metaphorical. Cognition, 61, 309–319. Goddard, C. (1998). Semantic Analysis: A Practical Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gruber, J. S. (1985). Lexical, conceptual, and encyclopedic meaning. Quaderni de Semanlica, 2, 254–267. Gumperz, J. J. (2001). Contextualization and ideology in intercultural communication. In A. D. Luzio, S. Gunthner, and F. Orletti (eds.), Culture in Communication: Analysis of Intercultural Situations (pp. 35–54). John Benjamins. Gumperz, J. J., and Levinson, S., eds. (1996). Rethinking Linguistic Relativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Haiman, J. (1980). Dictionaries and encyclopedias. Lingua, 50, 329–357 Harnad, S. (1990). The Symbol Grounding Problem. Physica D, 42, 335–346. Hauser, M. D., Chomsky, N., and Fitch, W. T. (2002). The faculty of language: What is it, who has it, and how did it evolve? Science, 298, 1569–1579. He, Sui. 2021. Cognitive metaphor theories in translation studies: Toward a dual-model parametric approach. Intercultural Pragmatics, 18(1), 25–52. Holland, D., and Quinn, N., eds. (1987). Cultural Models in Language and Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. House, J. (2014). Managing Academic Institutional Discourse in English as a Lingua Franca. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Hopkinson, Christopher. (2021). Realizations of oppositional speech acts in English: A contrastive analysis of discourse in L1 and L2 settings. Intercultural Pragmatics, 18(2): 163–202. Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1983). Mental Models. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kecskes, I. (2003). Situation-Bound Utterances in L1 and L2. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Kecskes, I. (2013). Intercultural Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kecskes, I. (2019a). English as a Lingua Franca: The Pragmatic Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kecskes, I. (2019b). Impoverished pragmatics? The semantics–pragmatics interface from an intercultural perspective. Intercultural Pragmatics, 16(5): 489–517. Kecskes, I. 2021. Processing implicatures in English as a Lingua Franca communication. Lingua, 256. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2021.103067. Kiefer, F. (1990). Linguistic, conceptual and encyclopedic knowledge: Some implications for lexicography. In T. Magay and J. Zigány (eds.), BudaLEX ’88 Proceedings: Papers from the 3rd International EURALEX Congress. Budapest: Akademiai Kiado.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.013 Published online by Cambridge University Press

12 Linguistic, Conceptual and Encyclopedic Knowledge

Kramsch, C. (1986). From language proficiency to interactional competence. The Modern Language Journal, 70(4), 366–372. Kramsch, C. (1993). Context and Culture in Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lakoff, G. (1987). Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Langacker, R. W. (1988). An overview of cognitive grammar. Topics in Cognitive Linguistics, Vol. III. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. LaPolla, R. J. (2010). Arguments against “Subject” and “Direct Object” as Viable Concepts in Chinese. Frankfurt: Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg. Leibniz, G. W. (1903). Opuscules et fragments inédits de Leibniz: Extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque royale de Hanovre, ed. Louis Couturat, Paris: Félix Alcan. Meierkord, C. (2002). “Language stripped bare” or “linguistic masala”? Culture in lingua franca communication. In K. Knapp and C. Meierkord (eds.), Lingua Franca Communication (pp. 109–134). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Mel’cuk, I., and Zholkovsky, A. (1984). Explanatory Combinatorial Dictionary of Modern Russian. Vienna: Wiener Slawistischer Almanach. Minsky, M. (1975). A framework for representing knowledge. In P. H. Winston (ed.), The Psychology of Computer Vision (pp. 211–277). New York: McGraw-Hill. Newmeyer, F. J. (2003). Grammar is grammar and usage is usage. Language, 79, 682–707. Paolucci, Claudio. 2021. The distinction between semantics and pragmatics: The point of view of semiotics. Intercultural Pragmatics, 18(3): 293–307. Pinker, S., and Jackendoff, R. (2005). The faculty of language: What’s so special about it? Cognition, 95, 201–236. Rampton, B. (1995). Crossing: Language and Ethnicity among Adolescents. London: Longman. Risager, K. (2006). Language and Culture: Global Flows and Local Complexity. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Rosch, E. (1977). Human categorization. In N. Warren (ed.), Advances in Cross-cultural Psychology (Vol. I, pp. 1–49). London: Academic Press. Schank, R. C., and Abelson, R. P. (1977). Scripts, Plans, Goals, and Understanding: An Enquiry into Human Knowledge Structures. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Searle, J. R. (1979). Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Slobin, D. (1991). Learning to think for speaking: Native language, cognition, and rhetorical style. Pragmatics, 1(1), 7–25. Slobin, D. I. (1997). Mind, code, and text. In J. Bybee, J. Haiman, and S. A. Thompson (eds.), Essays on Language Function and Language Type: Dedicated to T. Givón (pp. 437–467). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Taylor, J. (2000). The network model and the two-level model in comparison. In B. Peeters (ed.), The Lexicon–Encyclopedia Interface (pp. 115–143). Amsterdam: Elsevier. Van Olmen, D., and Tantucci, V. (2022). Getting attention in different languages: A usage-based approach to parenthetical look in Chinese, Dutch, English, and Italian. Intercultural Pragmatics, 19(2): 141–181. Werkmann, H., Marianna Bolognesi, A., and Kohl, K. (2021). The status of conventional metaphorical meaning in the L2 lexicon. Intercultural Pragmatics, 18(4), 447–467.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.013 Published online by Cambridge University Press

287

288

ISTVAN KECSKES

Whorf, B. L. (1939). The relation of habitual thought and behavior to language. In J. Carroll (ed.), Language, Thought and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Wierzbicka, A. (1996). Semantics: Primes and Universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.013 Published online by Cambridge University Press

13 Corpus Pragmatics Karin Aijmer

13.1 Introduction Corpus pragmatics is a hybrid discipline representing an alliance between corpus linguistics and pragmatics where the corpus-linguistic study provides the subject matter and pragmatics is used to explain the corpus data. Corpus pragmatics is still a new discipline characterized by varying degrees of dependence on corpus evidence. However, great progress is being made by studies extending the boundaries of pragmatic issues which can be studied by means of corpora and corpus-linguistic techniques. The interaction between the fields implies both challenges and possibilities. This chapter will give a state-of- the-art overview of the themes and issues in corpus pragmatics and describe new directions in the field represented by empirical corpus studies where synchronic pragmatic variation and change are analyzed in a broader social and cultural perspective. The rest of the chapter is structured in the following way. Section 13.2 introduces the objectives, methods, and scope of pragmatics and how these have changed over time. Section 13.3 brings up the advantages provided by recent attempts to annotate corpora with pragmatic information and gives an overview of corpora suited for pragmatic research. The major topics which have been dealt with in corpus pragmatics are illustrated in Section 13.4. Section 13.5 discusses problematic cases where corpora are used to analyze a pragmatic function. Section 13.6 deals with the extension of corpus pragmatics to social and interactive contexts. The chapter ends with some challenges for the future confronting corpus pragmatics.

13.2 Objectives, Methods, and Scope of Pragmatics The emphasis on “meaning as use” is essential for pragmatic approaches to language (Traugott and Dasher 2002: 16). However, the scope of pragmatics is difficult to circumscribe and the boundary between semantics and pragmatics is fuzzy.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.014 Published online by Cambridge University Press

290

KARIN AIJMER

We can distinguish several pragmatic orientations with different theoretical origins and research agendas. In the Anglo-Saxon tradition, pragmatics has its roots in ordinary language philosophy and in speech act theory (Austin 1962; Searle 1969). Within this tradition the aim of pragmatics is to study how speakers and hearers engage in the production and interpretation of utterances. The speaker’s intention is to convey a certain meaning and the hearer arrives at the speaker’s intended message by making pragmatic inferences on the basis of communicative principles, such as Grice’s (1975) maxims or the Relevance principle (Sperber and Wilson 1986), of the content of the message, and of information from the context. From early on, pragmatics has been closely associated with linguistics. Mey regards pragmatics as an interdisciplinary enterprise with a close connection to linguistics: “In particular, linguistics needs pragmatics to obtain a proper perspective for its functions . . . but also, pragmatics needs linguistics to provide the data to prove the pragmatic points” (2017: 4). Issues in “inferential pragmatics” have not usually been explored by corpus-linguistic methods. Instead, experimental methods have been proposed as a methodology to study how people actually produce and understand speech acts (Gibbs and Colston 2020). An influential contribution to the discussion of the scope and objectives of pragmatics comes from the European or continental tradition characterized by its focus on language in its social and cultural context (Verschueren 1999). In this perspective, pragmatics opens the field wide “and takes in the total context of the situation, understood historically as not just what is present here and now, but including that which came before, as well as that which may be expected or predicted” (Mey 2017: 16). A large number of phenomena in language are sociopragmatically grounded and require access to the context for their interpretation. This situation raises the problem of how the context should be defined and how the influence of contextual features on the interpretation of linguistic expressions can be integrated with a corpus-linguistic approach. We can conclude that an issue in corpus pragmatics is to decide which aspects of the context are relevant in the communication situation. Aspects of the context which may be relevant to utterance interpretation are collocating linguistic elements, the topic discussed, the preceding discourse, text type (genre), sociopragmatic information about the speakers, and general background knowledge.

13.3 Corpus Pragmatics The advantages of using corpora and corpus techniques to study language are well known. Corpora and corpus-linguistic methods offer opportunities to investigate the frequencies of lexical expressions and reveal their patterns of use on the basis of large amounts of authentic data. Leech et al. (2009: 32) describe corpus linguistics as a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis:

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.014 Published online by Cambridge University Press

13 Corpus Pragmatics

Whereas in other disciplines these terms are often regarded as incompatible opposites, in corpus linguistics quantitative and qualitative methods are extensively used in combination. It is also characteristic of corpus linguistics to begin with quantitative findings, and work toward qualitative ones.

Another useful distinction discussed by Leech et al. (2009) is that between formal identification and functional interpretation. On a formal level, we are interested in distinguishing distributional patterns of occurrence of structures. On the functional level, the concerns are with interpreting these functions in terms of factors external to corpus data, for instance cognitive, social or historical. Corpus linguistics can be combined with other fields of linguistics. However, in pragmatics corpora are a relative newcomer and it is not self-evident to what extent the two areas can benefit each other (Rühlemann and Aijmer 2015:1). Pragmatics is primarily concerned with the use of language in interaction where a specific speaker (writer) and addressee (reader) can be identified. Most research has been carried out on the basis of spoken language. Given the emergent and usage-based character of spoken language, we can expect the relation between the forms of lexical expressions and their functions to be complex. Ways of combining the two approaches and exploiting the strength of each are now being explored. The procedure involves going back and forth between the quantitative and the qualitative analysis of the data. The analysis begins with calculating the frequency of a certain form (such as well or you know). In the next stage the extracted occurrences are classified according to a specific theory or classification scheme and the frequencies of the different functions are calculated. Finally, the results of the quantitative analyses can be explained in a theoretical framework such as Conversation Analysis or Relevance Theory. It should be clear that corpora lend themselves to searching for a lexical word or construction in the corpus and a quantitative analysis of the form in different contexts. We therefore have many corpus analyses of pragmatic markers (e.g., you know or well), while it has been difficult to analyze politeness, “hedges,” or speech acts using corpus methods. However, there is now a great deal of interest in finding strategies to get around the problem of searching for a function (O’Keeffe 2018). One way forward is indicated by the possibility to annotate corpora with pragmatic information. However, the pragmatic annotation of corpora meets many challenges.

13.3.1 Pragmatic Annotation Morphosyntactic annotation of words in general corpora has been available for a long time. A similar “revolution” has now also reached pragmatics (Weisser 2017: 44). However, the pragmatic annotation of corpus data is a thorny issue. 1

There are by now several introductions to corpus pragmatics (e.g., Romero-Trillo 2008; Jucker and Taavitsainen 2014; Aijmer and Rühlemann 2015; Jucker 2018) with illustrations of the topics covered.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.014 Published online by Cambridge University Press

291

292

KARIN AIJMER

The complexity of the task is due to the fact that it is not clear what pragmatic features should be annotated, many features are difficult to identify lexically, and it is difficult to do the annotation automatically or semi-automatically (Weisser 2015).2 There have been several attempts in computer pragmatics to develop annotation schemes based on the automatic detection of dialogue/speech acts (see Weisser 2015 for details). One of the better-known schemes is the DAMSL model (Dialogue Act Markup in Several Layers) which goes beyond the classification suggested in philosophical speech act theory and annotates utterances on different levels, for example, depending on whether they have a forwards-looking or backwards-looking function. However, the existing annotation schemes in computer pragmatics have been accused of being unnecessarily complex and more work is needed to make them accessible to corpus pragmaticians (Weisser 2015). (For more discussion of pragmatic annotation schemes and speech/dialogue acts in computer pragmatics, see Archer et al. 2008.) Recently, there has also been a growing interest in annotating existing corpora for pragmatic information. The SPICE-Ireland Corpus has been annotated manually with features such as pragmatic markers, speech acts, quotatives, tags, and prosodic elements (Kallen and Kirk 2012). The pragmatic annotation of the function of speech acts was made on the basis of existing taxonomies which means that some functions may not appear (see below). Pragmatic markers cause problems because of their multifunctionality. What looks like a pragmatic marker can be ambiguous between different interpretations. In I think Bill is fat, it is not clear without considering the broader context whether “I think” is a comment clause with pragmatic function or is used in its grammatical function (cf. Brinton 2008 on “comment clauses”). The pragmatic annotation depends on the research interests of the linguist and on the theoretical framework within which the pragmatic expressions are analyzed. Rühlemann and O’Donnell (2012) excerpted the narratives from the demographic part of the British National Corpus (BNC) and annotated the texts with features such as report mode, quotatives, and participation framework. The Narrative Corpus is a fairly small corpus which was compiled for the specific goal to study narratives and not for general purposes (see Rühlemann and O’Donnell 2012). Projects of this kind involving the co-operation between computational linguistics and pragmatics will probably become more frequent in the future. Pragmatic annotation strengthens the potential of corpus pragmatics by making it possible to code pragmatic features, which makes it easier for the linguist to collect data. However, pragmatic annotation meets several challenges. The problem is how to find the “right criteria” or “shared guidelines” for identifying the expressions one wants to annotate. Annotation therefore 2

Archer and Culpeper (2018: 510) call for more approaches that focus on sociopragmatic features. They demonstrate a scheme implemented in the Sociopragmatic Corpus which annotates speaker/hearer relationships, social roles, etc.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.014 Published online by Cambridge University Press

13 Corpus Pragmatics

needs to be carried out manually. The researcher reads the corpus line by line in order to identify the items which need to be annotated and can then be searched for automatically. This process is very time-consuming. A balance therefore has to be struck between the degree of detail of the annotation and what it adds to the qualitative analysis carried out on the basis of the corpus. If the classification is too fine-grained, it may be difficult to find enough examples of a certain category for meaningful statistical comparisons.

13.3.2 Corpora Suited for Pragmatic Research Pragmatics is primarily concerned with the use of language in interaction where a specific speaker (writer) and addressee (reader) can be identified. A large number of pragmatic phenomena are specific to spoken language or occur more frequently there. For discourse-pragmatic studies spoken corpora are therefore essential, which has led to an increasing interest in building spoken corpora. However, outside English large spoken corpora are still unusual, since collecting a spoken corpus is time-consuming and the project requires a big budget. For English several large corpora of spoken language are available. The BNC (1994) with a spoken component of 10 million words is a gold mine for studying the frequency and distribution of linguistic expressions in spoken English. The corpus is also useful for pragmatic studies, since it includes demographic information about the age, gender, social class, and regional provenance of the speakers. The BNC (1994) has now been supplemented with the Spoken British National Corpus 2014 (Spoken BNC2014) (Love et al. 2017), which is modeled as far as possible on its predecessor. Other corpora providing “big data” are the Corpus of Spoken American English (COCA; Davies 2009) and the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA; Davies 2010). Another exciting new addition to the collection of spoken corpora is the London–Lund Corpus of Spoken British English 2 (Pöldvere et al. 2017), a halfa-million-word corpus of spoken language with data recorded in 2014–2019. The corpus was designed in the same way as the London–Lund Corpus of Spoken English (LLC), one of the earliest spoken corpora with recordings from the 1960s and 1970s, constituting a fairly small corpus of half a million words (Svartvik 1990). For many research questions in pragmatics, large corpora are not necessary (Clancy 2011). A new tendency in corpus pragmatics is to use smaller specialized corpora, for example, corpora of political discourse, family discourse, and academic speech to study pragmatic phenomena. Smaller corpora make it easier to analyze pragmatic meanings because it is more likely that the analyst has a good knowledge of the speech situation and the speakers (Garcia McAllister 2015: 46). Another advantage is that the corpus can be coded with features specific to the type of research carried out. Pragmatic items (elements having a form–function analysis) are mainly associated with spoken language and are therefore best studied in spoken

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.014 Published online by Cambridge University Press

293

294

KARIN AIJMER

corpora. However, they can also serve interactional and interpersonal functions in written discourse. Several studies have used written corpora to study pragmatic phenomena. For example, Gray and Biber (2015) wanted to study the adjectives and nouns indicating the writer’s attitudes or evaluative stance in a corpus of academic writing. In order to identify the structures which were new in academic writing, they documented the patterns of use in three subcorpora from the Longman Spoken and Written English corpus. Building on politeness theory, Diani (2015) investigated the use of mitigated critical comments in English and Italian book review articles.

13.4 Topics in Corpus Pragmatics 13.4.1 Pragmatic Markers Corpora and corpus-linguistic techniques are increasingly used to describe phenomena which do not have a natural place in grammar but have an important role in the communication situation. Ariel (2012: 30) uses the term form/ function pragmatics to describe a line of pragmatics concerned with pragmatic and discourse meanings (functions) associated with specific lexical items (or constructions). An important landmark in this tradition is Schiffrin’s monograph on discourse markers (1987), where she described the markers well, now, so, but, oh, because, or, I mean, y’know, and then in a small corpus of interviews with American Jews. Following Schiffrin’s pioneering research, an increasing number of studies have examined these and similar items in spoken corpora. Several different terms have been used besides “discourse marker,” which is now often used only with reference to expressions signaling a sequential relationship between the basic message and the preceding context (Fraser 1999). In this chapter I will use the term “pragmatic marker” as a broad term for lexical expressions which are not integrated in the syntactic structure and do not have propositional meaning. (For a more detailed description, see, e.g., Beeching 2016; Brinton 2017.) Pragmatic markers have functions in the evolving discourse much like Gumperz’ contextualization cues leading the hearer to resort to their background knowledge and by an inferential process retrieve the intended message (Gumperz 1996: 379). Corpus methods can be combined with many different theories and approaches to describe pragmatic markers. Corpora make it possible to search for pragmatic markers automatically and chart their frequencies in different contexts. The advantages of the method are illustrated by the rich output of corpus-based studies of pragmatic markers. Aijmer (2002) investigated the functions of selected pragmatic markers (now, oh, ah, just, sort of, and that sort of thing, actually) in the LLC (see Section 13.3.2). The pragmatic markers were analyzed with regard to the context (text type), collocational patterns, prosody, and function. Pragmatic markers are now also investigated on the basis of a combination or mixture of different methods and corpora. This is illustrated by Beeching’s

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.014 Published online by Cambridge University Press

13 Corpus Pragmatics

(2016) study of the meanings of the pragmatic markers well, just, you know, like, sort of, I mean from a sociolinguistic and diachronic perspective. The full BNC (1994, 100 million words) was selected for the purpose of investigating the variation in the frequency and use of the pragmatic markers in spoken interaction. In addition, a small specialized “young corpus” consisting of data from role plays was used to provide information on the most recent developments of the selected pragmatic markers. In addition, there are diachronic corpora which can be used as a corpus-pragmatic resource. Beeching used the Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674–1913, which contains spoken language to trace the changes of pragmatic markers over time. 13.4.1.1 Pragmatic Markers in an Extended Sense More and more grammatical features are now regarded as pragmatic markers in a broad sense and discussed from a corpus-pragmatic perspective. Examples include vocatives (Clancy 2015; Palacios-Martínez 2018), interjections (Norrick 2009, 2015; Stange 2019), general extenders (Cheshire 2007; Wagner et al. 2016), “emojis” (Li and Yang 2018), and dislocations (“tails”) (Timmis 2015). It can be shown that these elements can occupy a slot outside the sentence structure, they have functions rather than meanings and they have different functions depending on the context. As such, they qualify for pragmatic marker status. I will discuss a few case studies demonstrating this on the basis of corpora. Palacios Martínez (2018) argued that vocatives should not be regarded simply as forms of address but that they should be analyzed as pragmatic markers because of their position in the clause and function. A selection of common “familiarizers” (man, mate, brother, and boy) were extracted from recent corpora from two successive periods of time (the London English Corpus, 2004–2007 and the Multicultural London English Corpus, 2007– 2011).3 The corpus analysis showed that the familiarizers have increased in frequency over time and that their variation and changes were correlated with sociolinguistic factors such as the age of the speakers. Another finding was that the familiarizers occurred in both the left periphery and the right periphery of the clause with different functions. Interjections, too, can be regarded as pragmatic markers (in occurrences where they are “discursive” and not used as exclamations) (Stange 2019). They are potentially more challenging to interpret than other pragmatic markers since they lack corresponding forms having propositional meaning. Stange (2019) explored the discursive uses of interjections in the Spoken BNC2014 in order to demonstrate this. She showed that they had recurrent pragmatic functions, they were characteristic of spoken language and were typically found as “inserts” (Biber et al. 1999) or in free-standing positions. However, there were differences between various types of interjections. Phatic interjections like mhm require an addressee and are used with a back-channelling 3

The corpora were compiled within the Linguistic Innovators project (Cheshire et al. 2011).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.014 Published online by Cambridge University Press

295

296

KARIN AIJMER

function in response to what is said. Furthermore, they occurred in combinations with other interjections. Emotive interjections such as ow, ouch, ugh, yuck, whoops allow both for uses where the interjection expresses the speaker’s spontaneous emotions and discursive uses as a pragmatic marker. The findings of the study showed that their frequency in discursive uses varied significantly with regard to the emotion expressed. Interjections of disgust (ugh! Yuck!) and “spill-cries” (oops!) were, for instance, more frequently used as pragmatic markers than interjections expressing pain (ow! ouch!). Stange also found that young female speakers differed from other speaker groups in that they used emotive interjections such as ow, ouch, ugh, yuck, whoops more frequently than males. Ow and whoops were not used at all by male speakers. To sum up, the number of elements which are now treated as pragmatic markers and analyzed with quantitative methods is increasing as a result of the corpus-pragmatic turn. The “new pragmatic markers” also include graphic pragmatic symbols such as “emojis,” which are used in communication on the Internet and in social media. Li and Yang (2018) found that emojis were used in a corpus on the Internet with the function of enhancing emotion but also with interactive functions such as turn-taking or turn-giving. Filled and unfilled pauses have been studied by means of experimental methods and in different spoken corpora (Stenström 2011). There are several reasons for studying them systematically using a corpus-pragmatic approach. They occur frequently in certain genres in particular. They are found in positions where they are not integrated in the utterance (e.g., initially) with discourse management or planning-indicating functions. Another reason is that filled pauses are used differently depending on the speakers’ age, gender, and social class. Tottie (2011) argued that filled pauses (er, erm) in the BNC (1994) could be regarded as sociolinguistic (pragmatic) markers that differentiated between registers of English along with the gender, age, and socioeconomic class of the speakers. 13.4.1.2 Position, Function, and Corpus Pragmatics The study of pragmatic markers cannot ignore the relation between a marker’s placement and function. In a pioneering study, Clift (2001) showed that the pragmatic marker actually performed different conversational tasks in clauseinitial and clause-final position in the utterance or the turn. From a diachronic point of view, it has been suggested that elements have moved from the position inside the clause to the left periphery and then to the right periphery (Traugott and Dasher 2002). Basing themselves on this hypothesis, Degand and Fagard (2011) investigated, on the basis of diachronic corpora, how the meanings of the French pragmatic marker alors in the peripheries have been driven by syntactic and positional changes gradually evolving over time. Beeching and Detges (2014) desired to test the universality of the hypothesis that pragmatic markers receive different functions depending on whether they are placed in the leftmost and rightmost periphery of the utterance (or turn). According to this hypothesis, the leftmost position is best suited for expressing

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.014 Published online by Cambridge University Press

13 Corpus Pragmatics

subjective meanings while pragmatic elements in the rightmost position have an intersubjective (or hearer-oriented) meaning. The contributions to the volume test the Beeching–Detges hypothesis on the basis of corpus data from Asian languages (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) alongside English, French, and Italian data. The research questions for corpus pragmatics are, first, whether there is a relationship between position and function and second, whether the leftmost and rightmost positions in the utterance are linked to different functions. On the basis of the chapter findings, Beeching and Detges conclude that pragmatic markers are not constrained to a particular function in the left or the right periphery and that therefore the hypothesis cannot be upheld in a strong form but that the quantitative data showed that pragmatic markers tend to be used differently depending on their position in the utterance (turn). The contributions in Van Olmen and Šinkūnienė (2021) continue the debate about the relationship between position and function from a synchronic and diachronic perspective. The case studies include more pragmatic markers from both well-researched and less-researched languages.

13.5 Corpus Pragmatics and Function-to-Form Analyses 13.5.1 Politeness Topics such as politeness, evaluation, subjectivity, or hedging, which are at the heart of pragmatics, can be studied using a combination of pragmatic and corpus-linguistic methods. The number of such studies using corpus-linguistic methods trying to integrate a quantitative and qualitative analysis is now rapidly increasing.4 The challenges for a corpus-pragmatic approach are nicely illustrated by Culpeper and Gillings’s (2018) study of politeness. Culpeper and Gillings set out to examine whether there is a north–south politeness variation in England linked to the type of politeness used by speakers. Their method was to search for formulaic expressions (e.g., thanks, please, can you) in the Spoken BNC2014 which could be associated with negative or positive politeness (Brown and Levinson 1978). The problem with this approach was finding the right criteria for diagnosing an expression as polite. Moreover, the number of polite expressions which could be analyzed in this way was necessarily limited. As may be expected, the method also necessitated time-consuming manual reading and weeding out the occurrences that had other non-polite meanings in context. Culpeper and Gillings’s study points to new ways to study politeness by focusing on individual politeness expressions which can be analyzed by means of corpora with regard to functional, formal, and regional properties. However, similar studies are still rare because of the problems of analyzing politeness and identifying the items which can be searched for in the corpus. 4

On evaluation, see Goź dź -Roszkowski and Hunston (2016); on subjectivity see Butler (2008); and on hedging see Hulleberg-Johansen (2020).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.014 Published online by Cambridge University Press

297

298

KARIN AIJMER

13.5.2 Speech Acts Speech acts are a central notion in pragmatics. They are difficult to identify on the basis of form, and there is an ongoing debate about how they should be searched for in corpora. There are many challenges for the corpus-pragmatic analysis of speech acts. Speech acts do not have a fixed form and a single function. The same form (sorry) may realize speech acts other than an apology (e.g., to ask a person to repeat something). An apology can be interpreted sincerely or ironically depending on the context. Syntagmatically, the speech act may have a complex form consisting of a head and modifier, and it needs to be analyzed with regard to both the strategies it performs and its function. The patterning of a speech act also includes the response in the next speaker turn. These properties make them difficult to describe with the help of corpora. As a result, the focus in corpus-based speech act studies has been on those forms that are easy to identify. “Social acts” such as thanks, requests, and apologies have a routinized, searchable form and their functions can be described on the basis of corpora (Aijmer 1996). A particular speech act (e.g., thanking) is identified on the basis of (I)thank (you) (an illocutionary force indicating device “IFID”), which can be varied in different ways (e.g., thank you very much). The usage conditions can be analyzed along several contextual dimensions including speaker attitude, expected response, degree of conventionalization, and aspects of the social situation (e.g., what one is thanking for) (cf. also Jucker and Taavitsainen 2000). Aijmer (1996) used the notion (shared) analytical frame to account for what the speaker and hearer know about the function and context in which a particular speech act form is used. The data for Aijmer’s study comes from the LLC collected during the 1960s and 1970s and containing about half a million words. Recent studies have used a similar methodology on a larger set of materials. Deutschmann (2003) investigated the speech act of apologizing in a sub-corpus of the BNC (1994), using as a starting point a list of conventionalized forms extracted from existing taxonomies of apologies. The corpus (c. 5 million words) was used to describe the frequency and distribution of apologies in different speaker groups and in various conversational settings. It was also employed to study the correlation between a particular variant and situational factors (e.g., the type and imposition of the offense one is apologizing for). Aijmer and Deutschmann both used a pre-selected list of lexical items to study the functions of a speech act. However, the full range of realizations of a speech act may not be discovered using this methodology. Lutzky and Kehoe (2017) addressed this methodological problem in a study they carried out of apologies in the Birmingham Blog Corpus. The authors used a novel form of analysis to reveal “hidden manifestations” of apologies in the corpus by examining the collocates of the illocutionary force identifier sorry and its synonyms. In this way they discovered that the form oops (and its phonological variants) could be used as an apologizing IFID in online media.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.014 Published online by Cambridge University Press

13 Corpus Pragmatics

However, the methodology used cannot detect any forms that do not co-occur with sorry. The interplay between language and context is an important factor determining the hearer’s interpretation of the function of a pragmatic element in corpus-pragmatic studies. There is now a tendency to focus more on how speech acts emerge in the discourse and how they are identified in the ongoing negotiation between the speaker and the hearer. As a result, several new ways of using corpora have been explored to discover the variations of a speech act in different discourse contexts. Garcia Mc is Allister (2015) used a corpus-driven bottom-up approach to identify the ways in which the directive (general request) category was expressed which implied that she read through the transcripts of the corpus (the spoken component of the TOEFL 2000 Spoken and Written Academic Language Corpus) taking into account the prosodic and contextual cues used to identify a speech act in the general directive category. Corpus tools were then used to assign further linguistic information as indicators of the speaker’s intentions (e.g., the presence of a modal) to the examples identified as directives in the corpus. This approach made it possible to answer further research questions, for example what directives (requests, advice, warnings, etc.) people used in different situation types (study groups, office hours) and to make a detailed pragmatic analysis of the speech acts. The study also opened up for the empirical study of many specific, so far unexplored, speech acts with a directive function (e.g., giving directions or repeat a request).

13.5.3 Corpus Pragmatics and Turn-Taking Turn-taking is important to explain the structures emerging in the spoken interaction. Speakers take turns in the conversation “evoking the context,” which itself is the object of negotiation in the following speaker turn (Sacks et al. 1974). Exactly how a turn ends or continues will not be possible to predict on the basis of the ongoing discourse. However, in retrospect it can be shown that certain patterns of co-constructed turns recur indicating that certain contexts provide the opportunity for the second speaker to complete the turn along with other variations. We can get a more detailed and precise picture of what happens at the end of the turn using corpora. The potential of the corpus-based approach to search for patterns in the conversation where the second speaker completes or extends an utterance by the first speaker is illustrated by Clancy and McCarthy’s (2015) study of types of co-constructed turn-taking in a pragmatic variational perspective. The data is taken from the CANCODE Corpus, a collection of largely informal British English (compiled during the 1990s) and the Limerick Corpus of Irish English paralleling the design of CANCODE (Clancy and McCarthy 2015: 437). However, the search method is not self-evident. The authors focused on the formal side and searched for if, when, and which in turn-initial position, manually removing “false” examples where the subordinate clause was not

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.014 Published online by Cambridge University Press

299

300

KARIN AIJMER

followed by a completion of the turn by a second speaker. Their findings confirmed certain patterns which had been pointed out in studies not using corpora and showed that there were many variations of the co-constructional patterns which had not been observed earlier.

13.6 Corpus Pragmatics and Context The meaning and use of language are increasingly studied in corpora in the social and cultural context where it is produced. Context has been defined both in linguistics and in other disciplines. In linguistics the context of a lexical item refers to the words it collocates with. It has also been analyzed in discoursepragmatic terms as including the preceding and following discourse. In corpus pragmatic studies, “context” is now also used to refer to the social context. The social context has been difficult to define. However, anthropologists and sociolinguists have made important contributions to the description of the social or situational features which play a role for the production and processing of meaning in the communication situation. In a dynamic theory of pragmatics, indexicality plays an important role in these disciplines to explain how talk is linked to social and situational factors (Ochs 1996). Both (conventionalized) speech acts and pragmatic markers are indexically associated with sociocultural features which can be activated in the speech situation, such as “social identity,” understood as social persona or relationships (familiars versus non-familiars), group identity (gender, social class, generation, ethnic membership), and rank. Another important situational dimension is stance. To give an example, the speech act of thanking (thank you) is indexically associated with affective stance (“feeling gratitude”). The formulaic can you indexes a request and more indirectly interpersonal attitudes and politeness. Certain pragmatic markers may also index “youth talk” or “femaleness.” The indexical or social meanings of pragmatic elements can be described in a corpus-pragmatic perspective, since many new spoken corpora provide information about the speakers’ age, gender, and regional provenance. We can, for instance, study how speakers belonging to a particular age group use pragmatic markers to express a social identity.

13.6.1 Corpus Pragmatics and Sociolinguistic Variability Corpus pragmatics has recently been influenced both by sociolinguistics and by variational pragmatics because of the shared interest in the influence of the context on language. The terminology varies between the disciplines. Variationist sociolinguists use the term discourse-pragmatic feature (or variable) (rather than pragmatic marker or discourse marker) to refer to ‘a heterogeneous category of items or constructions’ which have discourse or pragmatic functions (Pichler 2016: 3).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.014 Published online by Cambridge University Press

13 Corpus Pragmatics

In sociolinguistics the interest in discourse-pragmatic variation is a recent phenomenon. Variationist methods taking into account sociolinguistic factors have been employed mainly to analyze phonological and morphological variation where the variants have the same meaning. Interestingly, the same methods have now also been applied to the study of pragmatic phenomena. However, the multifunctionality of (some) discourse-pragmatic features makes it problematic to conceptualize them as variables and to investigate their variation in a systematic way (Pichler 2016: 5; Waters 2016: 421). A number of solutions have therefore been proposed with the purpose to define the pragmatic variable in such a way that it can be used to study (discourse-)pragmatic variation. According to D’Arcy (2017: 165), the feature that is varied need not even be defined in a semantic or functional way. She argues that in order to carry out a variationist analysis of like the starting point should be structural (like occurs in structurally delimited contexts of variation) (cf. also Denis and Tagliamonte 2016: 90; Barron 2017b). In addition to the variationist studies, there is now a growing body of research using corpus-linguistic methods to identify discourse-pragmatic features and study their sociolinguistic variation. Both corpus linguistics and (variationist) sociolinguistics are concerned with describing language in its social contexts. However, the two methods differ and do not give comparable results. The corpus-linguistic methodology is characterized by a form-based approach where the frequency of tokens of a pragmatic marker such as like represents normalized rather than raw frequencies, which makes it possible to compare its frequencies across a range of speakers belonging to different age bands and either gender. The sociolinguistic approach can also be based on form (and corpora), but the frequency of a variable feature is measured in relation to other variants which could have been selected as variants and not in absolute terms (D’Arcy 2017: 163). We can now see that the interest in combining the two paradigms is growing, sparked by the possibility of using corpora which provide sociolinguistic data about the speakers. Special search tools make it possible to extract automatically the occurrences of a pragmatic marker in its linguistic context together with sociolinguistic information about the speakers’ age, gender, social class, and region. The quantitative analysis can then provide detailed information about the influence of both linguistic and nonlinguistic factors on the frequency and distribution of the form. Pragmatic markers, speech acts, and many other elements which vary depending on the social context have been studied in corpora. In a pioneering study, Andersen (2001) investigated the pragmatic markers innit and like in the Bergen Corpus of London Teenage Language (COLT) which was compiled in the 1990s. The corpus was used to study their form, function, and social variation. The analysis showed that the frequencies of like and innit were correlated with the speakers’ age and the locality in London where they came from. Another finding was that the ethnic minority group of the speakers

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.014 Published online by Cambridge University Press

301

302

KARIN AIJMER

played an important role in the use and spread of innit/is it but a lesser role in the use of like (Andersen 2001: 293).

13.6.2 Corpus Pragmatics Meets Variational Pragmatics Variational pragmatics aims to “systematically describe synchronic variation in the patterns of human interaction within one language due to such factors as region, gender, socio-economic status, ethnic identity and age” (Barron 2017b: 91). The methodology is contrastive and an effort is made to make the contrasted varieties as comparable as possible with regard to the speakers’ age, gender, social class, etc. The focus in variational pragmatics has been on speech acts, which have mostly been studied under controlled conditions on the basis of role plays or discourse completion tests (DCTs) (Félix-Brasdefer and Hasler-Barker 2017). Corpora and corpus-linguistic analysis have not generally been seen as a suitable method, the reason being that speech acts cannot be searched for without first identifying the forms. Moreover, speech acts are context-bound, which makes it difficult for the researcher to control the social and situational factors and norms influencing the choice of a particular variant (see Section 13.5.2). However, the situation is now changing thanks to the availability of comparable corpora which can be used to study similarities and differences in language use between varieties of the same language. The International Corpus of English (ICE-Corpus), compiled in the 1990s and consisting of sub-corpora representing national varieties of English, has been important for the development of variational corpus pragmatics.5 The spoken data in the corpora represent different text types such as informal face-to-face conversation, telephone conversation, and more formal speech. The ICE-Corpus has so far not been fully exploited as a resource to study regional variation. Kallen (2015) has shown one way in which the ICE-Corpus can be used to study variation. He compared the frequency and positions of actually in the Irish English component of the ICE-Corpus with the results of a similar investigation of actually in the other varieties. The analysis showed that actually occurred less frequently in the clause-marginal positions than many other varieties. Aijmer (2022) carried out a similar study of the pragmatic marker anyway. She observed that anyway occurred more frequently in the ICE-Ireland Corpus than in the other varieties of English in the corpus. Anyway was most common in the right periphery of the utterance in Irish English, British English, New Zealand English, Australian English, and Singapore English, whereas it dominated in the left periphery of the utterance in American, Canadian, and Philippine English. Anyway was significantly more frequent in the right periphery in Irish English, which she suggested may be due to its association with Irish friendliness. 5

The International Corpus of English (ICE), http://ice-corpora.net/ice/index.html.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.014 Published online by Cambridge University Press

13 Corpus Pragmatics

Comparable corpora are also suitable for variational pragmatic research on speech acts. The use of corpora and a quantitative analysis of different patterns transfers the interest from the function of the speech act to the ways it is realized, how the speech act is expressed, who uses it, and when. Barron (2017a) compared the speech act of “offers” in the British and the Irish components of the ICE-Corpus. The corpus analysis allows the researcher to investigate similarities and differences between the varieties at the level of form and strategies chosen to perform offers. Barron identified several methods to search for the speech act of offer. The search strings were based on previous research on offers and included a performative verb (offer), conventionalized patterns (shall I . . .), modifiers (if you want), routine responses (thanks), and descriptive comments or topic-related words (coffee, tea). However, there were problems such as devising criteria for the differentiation between offers and related speech acts (cf. Section 13.5.2). The quantitative analysis was followed by a qualitative in-depth analysis showing that the speakers of Irish English used more forceful offers, thus providing empirical evidence for the generally held opinion about the hospitality of the Irish. Another contribution to the corpus-pragmatic study of speech acts and regional variation is Jautz’s (2013) ambitious project of comparing thanking formulae in (a selection of spoken texts from) the BNC and the Wellington Corpus of Spoken New Zealand English (1 million words collected between 1988 and 1994).6 The initial quantitative analysis showed that British speakers used more (and different) gratitude expressions than New Zealand speakers, but the latter used thanking more for phatic talk. The qualitative analysis concerned how thanking formulae should be described in different politeness theories. There are also interesting initiatives to combine a variational pragmatic analysis with a study of changes over time. Ronan (2019) employed data from COCA and the Web-Based Global English (GloWbE)7 in order to study the use of the “x-much” construction (silly much). In addition, COHA (Davies 2010) was used to examine the time depth of the construction and its change over time. Ronan found that the “x-much” construction was extending its use to new grammatical and semantic areas and also that it varied in frequency across the varieties of English with the highest frequency in Singapore English.

13.6.3 Diachronic Corpus-Pragmatic Analyses Studies in historical corpus pragmatics at the intersection between historical linguistics, pragmatics, and corpus linguistics have emerged as an area of growing interest in the last twenty years (Jucker and Taavitsainen 2014). 6

7

The Wellington Corpus of Spoken New Zealand English (WSC), www.wgtn.ac.nz/lals/resources/corpora-default/cor pora-wsc. Corpus of Global Web-based English (GloWbE), www.english-corpora.org/glowbe/.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.014 Published online by Cambridge University Press

303

304

KARIN AIJMER

Brinton (2017) has described the developments of pragmatic markers such as I mean or you know within the grammaticalization framework. They arise from lexical elements and acquire grammatical qualities as the result of a number of syntactic and semantic changes. Lutzky (2012) is carried out a synchronic corpus-pragmatic analysis of three discourse markers (marry, well, and why) from a qualitative and a quantitative perspective but restricted to Early Modern English. She used a combination of Early Modern English corpora containing speech-based or speech-related data to analyze the functions of the discourse. She also used a specialized sociopragmatic corpus to investigate the social status and gender of the users of the interjections. We can now also use spoken corpora to study short-time changes in real time in conversational interaction. Many different words can be studied with regard to change in a sociopragmatic perspective. Aijmer (2021) studied the variation and short-time changes of well as an intensifying adverb before adjectives by comparing its frequency and uses in comparable contexts in the BNC (1994) and in the Spoken BNC2014. The intensifying use of well was first distinguished from other uses of well (e.g., as a pragmatic marker) and searched for in the context of a following adjective. The results showed that well as an intensifier was used differently by males and females, by that it increased in the speech of females over the twenty-year gap in time.

13.6.4 Corpus Pragmatics, Activity Type, and “Communicative Practice” Language is used differently depending on the activity we are engaged in. This is true about the lexis employed, but the activity also affects how and when we apologize to someone and what types of requests we make. Several terms (genre, text type) have been used to refer to specific communicative activities. I will use Levinson’s term “activity type” with reference to “a category whose focal members are goal-defined, socially constituted, bounded events with constraints on participants, setting, and so on” (1979: 69).8 Activity types are less often discussed than region or other macro-social variables in variational pragmatics, but they have an important role to explain how pragmatic markers and speech acts are used with different frequencies and for different purposes depending on the activity. The interaction between activity type and pragmatics can be studied on the basis of corpora representing different text types. Aijmer (2013) studied the frequencies and distribution of the pragmatic markers (well, actually, in fact) across a wide range of text types in the ICECorpus (e.g., conversation, telephone conversation, classroom lesson, broadcast discussions, legal cross-examinations, parliamentary debates). In this way she showed that in fact was more frequent in cross-examinations than in other

8

A more generally used term is “genre” (see Aijmer and Lewis 2017). The term “text type” is used in corpus linguistics “to refer to a group of related texts in a corpus.”

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.014 Published online by Cambridge University Press

13 Corpus Pragmatics

text types where it was used in questions by the counsel when the answer to the question was already known (Aijmer 2013: 92). In addition to activity type, one can identify more fine-grained “communicative practices” (Linell 1998) influencing the use of language. Both the topical domain and the tasks performed in the speech situation may affect the meaning and use of a lexical expression (including pauses). Staley and Jucker (2021) investigated the frequency, position and function of the pause-filler uhm using a corpus-pragmatic approach. They used a specialized corpus consisting only of restaurant server talk, the Los Angeles Restaurant Corpus compiled in 2011. The restrictions to a small range of speech situations allowed the authors to relate the frequency and function of uhm to a specific task performed by the server (highlighting the food item when serving food to guests).

13.6.5 Corpus-Based Interlanguage Pragmatic Studies Another area of pragmatic studies where corpora are now useful is interlanguage pragmatics, defined as the area at the intersection between pragmatics and learner language. Traditionally, this discipline focused on experimental methods and written DCTs. In recent years, learner corpora have been used as an additional methodology especially for the purpose of studying learners’ use of pragmatic markers in actual language use (see Romero-Trillo 2018 for more discussion). A considerable number of studies have by now investigated pragmatic markers from a corpus-based interlanguage pragmatic perspective. Müller (2005) compared the use of the pragmatic markers so, well, now, and like by American and German students based on a corpus compiled for that purpose. Interlanguage corpus pragmatic studies can now also be carried out on the basis of computerized learner corpora. The Louvain International Database of Spoken English Interlanguage (LINDSEI Corpus) contains corpora representing the language produced by advanced learners of English from different mother tongue backgrounds. Alongside the learner corpora, a similar corpus has been compiled with the difference that the speakers are native speakers of English. We can therefore compare the spoken language produced by learners with that of native speakers. The individual learner corpora are carefully annotated with information about the learner’s native language, number of years that they have studied English, contact with native speakers, etc. Aijmer (2011) used the Swedish component of the LINDSEI Corpus to compare the Swedish learners’ use of well with the native speakers’ use of the marker. By comparing learners’ use of the pragmatic marker with native speaker’s use, she could establish that well was overused by learners in relation to the native speaker norm. The qualitative analysis showed that well was more frequently used by learners than by native speakers as a fluency device to cope with speech management problems. She also found that there were large differences between the individual learners with respect to their use of well, suggesting that pragmatic markers are acquired in different ways and to different extents. In another study, Buysse

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.014 Published online by Cambridge University Press

305

306

KARIN AIJMER

(2017) used learner corpus data from the LINDSEI Corpus to test the hypothesis that you know was employed less frequently by learners than by native speakers and that learners used it for different purposes than native speakers. The findings demonstrated that you know was used less frequently in the Dutch, French, German, Spanish component than in the reference corpus but that the learners used you know in all the nine functions that were attested in the corpus. The quantitative deviations between the learners could also be explained from a qualitative perspective. It was seen that learners used you know more in the editing function (e.g., marking a repetition or reformulation) than native speakers, as may be expected. Another factor explaining the learners’ use of you know was their native language. The findings showed that German learners used you know less frequently than learners with other mother tongues.

13.6.6 Multimodal Corpus Pragmatics An issue in corpus pragmatics is which features of spoken communication are relevant to pragmatics because they are used by the hearer as cues to the interpretation of the utterance. Spoken communication does not only involve the transfer of a verbal message, but the speaker’s intentions are additionally signaled nonverbally by gestures and face expressions, Recently, we have witnessed a rapprochement between corpus pragmatics and multimodal approaches to the study of spoken language production. As a consequence, there are now several attempts to build multimodal corpora which can be used to facilitate and enrich pragmatic studies. Multimodal corpora provide rich information about the context in which the communication occurs with respect to gestures and face expressions. There are now several ongoing projects extending the study of corpus pragmatics in this direction (see, e.g., Huang 2021). Some pioneering research has been carried out on the basis of the Nottingham Multi-Modal Corpus combining a pragmatic study of back-channelling in the conversation with the speakers’ use of head-nods (Knight and Adolphs 2008). Back-channels were defined as short response items which did not appear to take over a speaker turn commonly expressed by yeah. The authors found that length of the nods co-occurred with whether the back-channel items were used to mark information receipt, or whether they were used to express speaker–hearer convergence.

13.7 Challenges for the Future A growing number of studies have shown how the quantitative corpus-based analysis of pragmatic phenomena can be the entry-point for qualitative, indepth studies. However, a number of challenges for corpus pragmatics remain and need to be considered.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.014 Published online by Cambridge University Press

13 Corpus Pragmatics

A problematic issue in corpus pragmatic studies concerns the context. A major challenge for future research is to ensure that the corpora make available to the researcher as much as possible of the contextual information that is relevant to the hearer’s interpretation of the utterance. At the present time, many corpora represent different text types or activities (such as service encounter or office talks) offering the opportunity to study how they influence the interpretation. However, a large number of other linguistic and extralinguistic features may be behind the selection of a certain variant. These include sociopragmatic features such as the speaker’s age, gender, and social class. Another challenge concerns the extent to which we can use corpora to study pragmatic phenomena such as politeness, evaluation, hedging, turntaking, and indirect speech acts. Researchers are now taking steps toward using corpora for bottom-up searches to identify elements which can be associated with a particular pragmatic function. The advantage of this method is that it avoids the intuition-based selection of items as candidates for analysis, thereby providing a more reliable picture of what the variants are (Andersen 2018: 473). As has been shown above, we have many corpora of spoken language which serve as a resource for pragmatic studies. However, we need more corpora which are suited to study the function of pragmatic phenomena in different genres. New genre-based corpora should also include blogs, discussion forums, and Twitter. Finally, there is a demand for spoken corpora for languages other than English. Corpus pragmatics interacts with other disciplines to a greater or lesser extent. Just as we now have historical corpus pragmatics (Jucker and Taavitsainen 2014), there are also alliances between corpus linguistics and variational pragmatics and between corpus linguistics and sociopragmatics. Other combinations are multimodal corpus pragmatics and interlanguage corpus pragmatics. Corpora and corpus-linguistic methods also hold the potential to contribute to crosslinguistic pragmatic studies (Aijmer and SimonVandenbergen 2006; Aijmer 2009; Aijmer and Lewis 2017). The comparison between the languages is made possible by the availability of parallel corpora consisting of translations between languages. These new hybrid disciplines have in common that they combine a qualitative analysis with a quantitative corpus analysis. The research questions depend on the particular discipline. The empirical corpus-based analysis leads to more reliable results than alternative approaches because they are based on large amounts of real data and can give rise to new research questions which can be tested. The corpus-based study of pragmatic phenomena is no longer neglected but much research remains to be done. We are at the beginning of an era where more and more pragmatic elements are studied from a sociopragmatic corpus perspective (in different situations, regions, and activity types). The pragmatic elements which have been investigated in corpora are mainly pragmatic markers and speech acts. An increasing number of elements categorized as adverbs, vocatives, interjections, and pauses have been shown to be better analyzed as

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.014 Published online by Cambridge University Press

307

308

KARIN AIJMER

pragmatic markers with interactive and interpersonal functions. On the agenda for corpus pragmatic studies is to study more phenomena from a pragmatic variational perspective. There are no doubt many lexical expressions, constructions, and whole utterances in language which are indexically associated with social and other contextual features and which vary with regard to social and discourse-pragmatic variables in the communication situation. A great deal of cross-pragmatic research also remains to be done on the basis of corpora which are comparable with regard to genre and sociolinguistic features. New possibilities for variational corpus-based pragmatic studies are opened up by projects having the aim to compile big spoken corpora which are comparable with existing corpora such as the new Spoken BNC2014.

References Aijmer, K. (1996). Conversational Routines in English: Convention and Creativity. London: Longman. Aijmer, K. (2002). English Discourse Particles: Evidence from a Corpus. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Aijmer, K., ed. (2009). Special issue on contrastive pragmatics. Languages in Contrast, 9(1), 1–181. Aijmer, K. (2011). Well, I’m not sure I think . . . The use of well by non-native speakers. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 16(2), 231–254. Aijmer, K. (2013). Understanding Pragmatic Markers: A Variational Pragmatic Approach. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Aijmer, K. (2021). “That’s well good”: A re-emergent intensifier in current British English. Journal of English Linguistics, 49(1), 18–38. Aijmer, K. (2022). “Well he’s sick anyway like”: Anyway in Irish English. Corpus Pragmatics: International Journal of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics, 6(2), 101–125. Aijmer, K., and D. Lewis, eds. (2017). Contrastive Analysis of Discourse-Pragmatic Aspects of Linguistic Genres. Cham: Springer. Aijmer, K., and Simon-Vandenbergen, A.-M. (2006). Pragmatic Markers in Contrast. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Aijmer, K., and Rühlemann, C. (2015). Corpus Pragmatics: A Handbook. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Andersen, G. (2001). Pragmatic Markers and Sociolinguistic Variation. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Andersen, G. (2018). Corpus construction. In A. H. Jucker, K. Schneider, and W. Bublitz (eds.), Methods in Pragmatics (pp. 467–494). Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. Archer, D., Culpeper, J., and Davies, M. (2008). Pragmatic annotation. In M. Kytö and A. Lüdeling (eds.), Corpus Linguistics: An International Handbook (pp. 613–642). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Archer, D. and Culpeper, J. (2018). Corpus annotation. In A. H. Jucker, K. Schneider, and W. Bublitz (eds.), Methods in Pragmatics (pp. 495–525). Berlin/Boston: Mouton de Gruyter.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.014 Published online by Cambridge University Press

13 Corpus Pragmatics

Ariel, M. (2012). Research paradigms in pragmatics. In K. Allan and J. M. Jaszczolt (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Pragmatics (pp. 23–45). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Austin, J. L. (1962). How to Do Things with Words: The William James Lectures Delivered at Harvard University in 1955. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Barron, A. (2017a). The speech act of “offers” in Irish English. World Englishes, 36(2), 224–238. Barron, A. (2017b). Variational pragmatics. In A. Barron, G. Yueuo, and G. Steen (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Pragmatics (pp. 91–104). London/New York: Routledge. Beeching, K. (2016). Pragmatic Markers in British English: Meaning in Social Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Beeching, K., and Detges, U. (2014). Introduction. In K. Beeching and U. Detges (eds.), Discourse Functions at the Left and Right Periphery: Crosslinguistic Investigations of Language Use and Language Change (pp. 1–23). Brill: Leiden. Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., and Finegan E. (1999). The Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman. Brinton L. J. (2008). The Comment Clause in English: Syntactic Origin and Pragmatic Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brinton, L. J. (2017). The Evolution of Pragmatic Markers in English: Pathways of Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brown, P., and Levinson, S. C. (1978). Universals in language usage: Politeness phenomena. In E. N. Goody (ed.), Questions and Politeness: Strategies in Social Interaction (pp. 56–311). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Butler, C. S. (2008). The subjectivity of basically in British English: A corpus-based study. In Romero-Trillo, J. (ed.), Pragmatics and Corpus Linguistics: A Mutualistic Entente (pp. 37–63). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Buysse, L. (2017). The pragmatic marker “you know” in learner Englishes. Journal of Pragmatics, 121, 40–57. Cheshire, J. (2007). Discourse variation, grammaticalization and stuff like that. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 11, 155–193. Cheshire, J., Kerswill, P., Fox, S., and Torgersen, E. (2011). Contact, the feature pool and the speech community: The emergence of Multicultural London English. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 15(2), 151–196. Clancy, B. (2011). Complementary perspectives on hedging behaviour in family discourse: The analytical synergy of variational pragmatics and corpus linguistics. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 16(3), 371–390. Clancy, B. (2015). “Hurry up baby son all the boys is finished their breakfast”: Examining the use of vocatives as pragmatic markers in Irish Traveller and settled family discourse. In C. Amador-Moreno, K. McCafferty, and E. Vaughan (eds.), Pragmatic Markers in Irish English (pp. 229–247). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Clancy, B., and McCarthy, M. (2015). Co-constructed turn-taking. In K. Aijmer and C. Rühlemann (eds.), Corpus Pragmatics: A Handbook (pp. 430–453). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clift, R. (2001). Meaning in interaction. Language, 77, 246–291. Culpeper, J., and Gillings, M. (2018). Politeness variation in England: A north–south divide? In V. Brezina, R. Love, and K. Aijmer (eds.), Corpus Approaches to Contemporary British Speech: Sociolinguistic Studies of the Spoken BNC2014 (pp. 33–59). New York/London: Routledge.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.014 Published online by Cambridge University Press

309

310

KARIN AIJMER

D’Arcy, A. (2017). Discourse-Pragmatic Variation in Context: Eight Hundred Years of LIKE. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Davies, M. 2009. The 385+ million word Corpus of Contemporary American English (1990–present). International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 14(2): 159–190. Davies, M. (2010). The Corpus of Historical American English: 400 million words, 1810– 2009. http://corpus.byu.edu/coha/. Degand, L., and Fagard, B. (2011). Alors between discourse and grammar: The role of syntactic position. Functions of Language, 18(1), 29–56. Denis, D., and Tagliamonte, S. A. (2016). Innovation, right? Change, you know? Utterance-final tags in Canadian English. In H. Pichler (ed.), Discourse-Pragmatic Variation and Change in English: New Methods and Insights (pp. 86–112). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Deutschmann, M. (2003). Apologising in British English. Institutionen för moderna språk. Umeå: Umeå universitet. Diani, G. (2015). Politeness. In K. Aijmer and C. Rühlemann (eds.), Corpus Pragmatics: A Handbook (pp. 169–191). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Félix-Brasdefer, J. C., and Hasler-Barker, M. (2017). Elicited data. In A. Barron, G. Yueuo, and G. Steen (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Pragmatics (pp. 27–40). London/ New York: Routledge. Fraser, B. (1999). What are discourse markers? Journal of Pragmatics, 14, 219–236. Garcia McAllister, P. (2015). Speech acts: A synchronic perspective. In K. Aijmer and C. Rühlemann (eds.), Corpus Pragmatics: A Handbook (pp. 29–51). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gibbs, R. W., and Colston, H. L. (2020). Pragmatics always matters: An expanded vision of experimental pragmatics. Front. Psychol., July 24. https://doi.org/10.3389 /fpsyg.2020.01619. Goźdź-Roszkowski, S., and Hunston, S. (2016). Corpora and beyond: Investigating evaluation in discourse. Introduction to the special issue on corpus approaches to evaluation Corpora, 11(2), 131–141. Gray, D., and Biber, D. (2015). Stance markers. In K. Aijmer and C. Rühlemann (eds.), Corpus Pragmatics: A Handbook (pp. 219–246). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole and J. M. Morton (eds.), Syntax and emantics 3: Speech acts (pp. 41–58). New York: Academic Press. Gumperz, J. J. (1996). The linguistic and cultural relativity of inference. In J. J. Gumperz and S. C. Levinson (eds.), Rethinking Linguistic Relativity (pp. 374–406). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Huang, L. (2021). Toward multi-modal corpus pragmatics: Rationale, case, and agenda. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 36(1). DOI:10.1093/llc/ fqz080. Hulleberg Johansen, S. (2020). “I just need to like see what I can do”: A contrastive study of hedging strategies in English and Norwegian informal spoken conversations. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages, University of Oslo. Jautz, S. (2013). Thanking Formulae in English: Explorations across Varieties and Genres. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Jucker, A. H., and Taavitsainen, I. (2000). Diachronic speech act analysis: Insults from flyting to flaming. Journal of Historical Pragmatics, 1(1), 67–95.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.014 Published online by Cambridge University Press

13 Corpus Pragmatics

Jucker, A. H., and Taavitsainen, I. (2014). Diachronic corpus pragmatics: Intersections and interactions. In A. H. Jucker, I. Taavitsainen, and J. Tuominen (eds.), Diachronic Corpus Pragmatics (pp. 3–26). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Jucker, A. H. (2018). Introduction to part 5: Corpus pragmatics. In A. H. Jucker, K. Schneider, and W. Bublitz (eds.), Methods in Pragmatics (pp. 455–466). Berlin/ Boston: Mouton de Gruyter. Kallen, J. L. (2015). “Actually, it’s unfair to say that I was throwing stones”: Comparative perspectives on uses of actually in ICE-Ireland. In C. AmadorMoreno, K. McCafferty, and E. Vaughan (eds.), Pragmatic Markers in Irish English (pp. 135–155). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Kallen, J. L., and Kirk, J. (2012). SPICE-Ireland: A User’s Guide. Belfast: Cló Ollscoil na Banríona. Knight, D., and Adolphs, S. (2008). Multi-modal corpus pragmatics: The case of active listenership. In J. Romero-Trillo (ed.), Pragmatics and Corpus Linguistics: A Mutualistic Entente (pp. 175–190). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Leech, G., Hundt, M., Mair, C., and N. Smith. (2009). Change in Contemporary English: A Grammatical Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Levinson, S. C. (1979). Activity types and language. Linguistics, 17, 365–379. Li, L., and Yang, Y. (2018). Pragmatic functions of emoji in internet-based communication: A corpus-based study. Asian Journal of Second and Foreign Language Education, 16(3). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40862-018-0057-z Linell, P. (1998). Approaching Dialogue Talk, Interaction and Contexts in Dialogic Perspectives. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Love, R., Dembry. C., Hardie. A., Brezina,V., and McEnery, T. (2017). The Spoken BNC2014: Designing and building a spoken corpus of everyday conversations. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 22(3), 319–344. Lutzky, U. (2012). Discourse Markers in Early Modern English. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Lutzky, U., and Kehoe, A. (2017). “Oops, I didn’t mean to be so flippant.” A corpus pragmatic analysis of apologies in blog data. Journal of Pragmatics, 116: 27–36. Mey, J. L. (2017). Interdisciplinarity in pragmatics and linguistics. In A. Barron, Y. Gu, and G. Steen (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Pragmatics (pp. 4–18). London/ New York: Routledge. Müller, S. (2005). Discourse Markers in Native and Non-native English Discourse. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Norrick, N. N. (2009). Interjections as pragmatic markers. Journal of Pragmatics, 41, 866–891. Norrick, N. N. (2015). Interjections. In K. Aijmer and C. Rühlemann (eds.), Corpus Pragmatics: A Handbook (pp. 249–275). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ochs, E. (1996). Linguistic resources for socializing humanity. In J. J. Gumperz and S. C. Levinson (eds.), Rethinking Linguistic Relativity (pp. 407–437). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. O’Keeffe, A. (2018). Corpus-based function-to-form approaches. In A. H. Jucker, K. Schneider, and W. Bublitz (eds.), Methods in Pragmatics (pp. 587–618). Berlin/ Boston: Mouton de Gruyter. Palacios-Martínez, I. (2018). ‘Help me move that, blood’ A corpus-based study of the syntax and pragmatics of vocatives in the language of British teenagers. Journal of Pragmatics, 130, 33–50.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.014 Published online by Cambridge University Press

311

312

KARIN AIJMER

Pichler, H. (2016). Introduction: Discourse-pragmatic variation and change. In H. Pichler (ed.), Discourse-Pragmatic Variation and Change in English: New Methods and Insights (pp. 1–18). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pöldvere, N., Paradis, C., and Johansson, V. (2017). The London-Lund Corpus 2: A New Corpus of Spoken British English in the Making (LLC 2). Lund University. https:// portal.research.lu.se/en/publications/the-london-lund-corpus-2-a-new-corpus-ofspoken-british-english-i. Romero-Trillo, J., ed. (2008). Pragmatics and Corpus Linguistics: A Mutualistic Entente. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Romero-Trillo, J. (2018). Corpus pragmatics and second language pragmatics: A mutualistic entente in theory and practice. Corpus Pragmatics, 2, 113–127. Ronan, P. (2019). Silly much? Tracing the spread of a new expressive marker in recent corpora. Corpus Approaches into World Englishes and Language Contrasts (Studies in Variation, Contacts, and Change in English, Vol. 20), ed. H. Parviainen, M. Kaunisto, and P. Pahta. Helsinki: VARIENG. Rühlemann. C., and Aijmer, K. (2015). Introduction. Corpus pragmatics: Laying the foundations. In K. Aijmer and C. Rühlemann (eds.), Corpus Pragmatics: A Handbook (pp. 1–26). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rühlemann, C., and M. B. O’Donnell (2012). Introducing a corpus of conversational narratives: Construction and annotation of the Narrative Corpus. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 8(2), 313–350. Sacks, H., Schegloff, E., and Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language, 50(4), 696–735. Schiffrin, D. (1987). Discourse Markers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Searle, J. R. (1969). Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sperber, D., and Wilson, D. (1986). Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell. Staley, L., and Jucker, A. H. (2021). The uh-deconstructed pumpkin pie: The use of uh and um in Los Angeles restaurant server talk. Journal of Pragmatics, 172, 21–34. Stange, U. (2019). The social life of emotive interjections in spoken British English. Scandinavian Studies in Linguistics, 10(1), 174–193. Stenström, A.-B. (2011). Pauses and hesitation. In G. Andersen and K. Aijmer (eds.), Pragmatics of Society (pp. 537–567). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Svartvik, J. (1990). The London–Lund Corpus of Spoken English: Description and Research. Lund: Lund University Press/Bromley: Chartwell-Brat. Timmis, I. (2015). Tails. In K. Aijmer and C. Rühlemann (eds.), Corpus Pragmatics: A Handbook (pp. 304–327). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tottie, G. (2011). Uh and um as sociolinguistic markers in British English. The International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 16(2), 173–196. Traugott, E. C., and Dasher, R. B. (2002). Regularity in Semantic Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Van Olmen, D., and Šinkūnienė, J., eds. (2021). Pragmatic Markers and Peripheries. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Verschueren, J. (1999). Understanding Pragmatics. London: Arnold. Wagner, S. E., Hesson, A., and Little, H. M. (2016). The use of referential general extenders across registers. In H. Pichler (ed.), Discourse Pragmatic Variation and

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.014 Published online by Cambridge University Press

13 Corpus Pragmatics

Change in English: New Methods and Insights (pp. 211–231). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Waters, C. (2016). Practical strategies for elucidating discourse-pragmatic variation. In H. Pichler (ed.), Discourse-Pragmatic Variation and Change in English: New Methods and Insights (pp. 41–55). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weisser, M. (2015). Speech act annotation. In K. Aijmer and C. Rühlemann (eds.), Corpus Pragmatics: A Handbook (pp. 84–110). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weisser, M. (2017). Corpora. In A. Barron, G. Yueuo, and G. Steen (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Pragmatics (pp. 41–52). London/New York: Routledge.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.014 Published online by Cambridge University Press

313

14 Prosodic Pragmatics in Context Jesús Romero-Trillo and Yalda Sadeghi

14.1 Introduction The relationship between context and prosody is undoubtedly one of the most intuitive ones in language. At the same time, it is one of the most difficult to describe because it is based on acoustic cues that need only milliseconds to create an image in our brain. However, speakers of a language can generally understand their interlocutors’ emotional and cognitive status through their prosodic realization. Paraphrasing the article published by Bolinger (1972) and entitled “accent is predictable (if you’re a mind reader),” we can say: prosody is predictable (if you’re a contextual reader). Pragmatics mainly focuses on spoken language and investigates how speakers communicate and understand information with the aid of the contextual features that are present in any interaction. Nevertheless, the description of the synergic relationship between prosody and pragmatics is an ongoing task that has not been fully approached by many linguists. In fact, Levinson’s (1983: 36) famous dictum is still valid: “Various syntactic rules seem to be properly constrained only if one refers to pragmatic conditions; and, similarly, for matters of stress and intonation.” Prosodic pragmatics (Romero-Trillo 2012, 2019) is the branch of pragmatics that attempts to identify the intentionality of the speaker’s meaning in a real context based on the analysis of the suprasegmental aspects of speech production. If prosody is the study of the way an utterance is pronounced in unison with the perceptual features of pitch, length, and loudness, prosodic pragmatics is the study of the acoustic and cognitive contextual parameters in conversation. A significant phenomenon that needs to be highlighted in the description of the prosodic system of any language is the interplay between the intonational and the lexical-grammatical forms (Bolinger 1978; Cruz-Ferreira 1987; Ladd 1996), as prosody interacts with the grammatical, pragmatic, and emotional This work was supported by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (Spain) under Grant PID2019-105678RB-C22.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.015 Published online by Cambridge University Press

14 Prosodic Pragmatics in Context

levels of language production in real contexts (Snow and Balog 2002). In this sense, slight variations in prosodic performance, such as the prominence, the duration, or the speech rate of an utterance, can influence the linguistic and emotional interpretation of a message, as well as condition the relationship between the speaker and hearer. In return, the interpretation of prosody can also alter the contextual variables in which a message is embedded.

14.2 Pragmatics and Prosody We must differentiate between the general patterns of prosody that function at the phonological level in a language, and the specific acoustic analysis of prosody in the interpretation of meaning at the micro-level of conversation, bearing in mind all idiolectal features of the speakers in terms of sex, age, emotional state, dialectal origin, etc. There are different models of prosodic analysis that are generally classified under what can be described as continuous or categorial. The continuous models are mainly interested in the description of the variation of the F0, i.e., the fundamental frequency, while the categorial models try to identify the F0 movements according to an established paradigm that assigns a communicative meaning to the prosodic variation. Within the categorial approach we can mention two competing systems: the Tone and Break Indices system (ToBI) (Pierrehumbert 1980; Pierrehumbert and Hirschberg 1990), which is based on what is called the autosegmental theory of intonation; and the Nuclear Tone Theory (Cruttenden 1997), which focuses on the nuclear accent of the utterance and develops the original descriptions by Halliday (1967) and O’Connor and Arnold (1973), and is the preferred one in prosodic pragmatics research (Romero-Trillo 2012, 2019). In the analysis of context, one of the prosodic elements that is more significant in any communicative event is prominence, which is used by the speaker to signal the focus of the utterance both at the word level and at the utterance level. Lexical stress (Bolinger 1958; Lehiste 1970) refers to the inherent prosodic prominence of a syllable, generally louder, stronger, and longer than the rest of the syllables within the same word. For this purpose, numerous studies have analyzed “stress” or “accent” at a segmental level by considering some of the acoustic correlates of stress (duration, frequency, amplitude, and intensity). For instance, Fry (1954) studied the influence of the intensity and duration cues on the perception of linguistic stress patterns; Liberman (1960) concentrated on how duration influenced the judgment of what is being stressed; and Pollock et al. (1993) observed how fundamental frequency, duration, and intensity indicate word stress. However, although every word has a stressed syllable, not every word within an utterance receives the same emphasis. The pseudo-equivalent terms “focus,” “prominence” (Brazil 1975), “pitch accent” (Bolinger 1958), or “tonic” – the one we shall predominantly use in the chapter – (Halliday

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.015 Published online by Cambridge University Press

315

316

JESÚS ROMERO-TRILLO AND YALDA SADEGHI

1967; Halliday and Matthiessen 2014) refer to the additional emphasis assigned to a specific part of the message by means of some acoustic properties to one of the stressed syllables, the focus, which becomes the most meaningful element in the tone unit. Therefore, the focus has been acoustically analyzed at a suprasegmental level by, among others, Cooper et al. (1985) and Nooteboom and Kruyt (1987), who investigated how accentuation of words in context was related to fundamental frequency and duration, both separately and in interaction. Also, Terken (1991) discussed the importance of fundamental frequency in the perception of prominence within accented words, and Eefting (1991) underlined the importance of accentuation in the duration of words in context. The study of the tonic centers around the relationship between the form of the message (duration, fundamental frequency, and intensity) and the discourse meaning conveyed to establish coherence within the specific context. In fact, although the traditional unit of analysis of the tonic used to be the phoneme or syllable within individual words (Pollock et al. 1993; De Jong and Zawaydeh 2002), or within syntactic units: clauses or sentences (Cooper et al. 1985; Eady and Cooper 1986; Heldner and Strangert 2001), other approaches have selected the tone unit as natural environment to study the tonic, due to its pragmatic role in the structure of the message (Romero-Trillo 1994). One of the most significant approaches in the study of the tonic inside the tone unit has been the description of its contrastive function in communication (Halliday 1970; Bolinger 1972; Cooper et al. 1985; Cruttenden 1997; Halliday and Matthiessen 2014). The other approach has been the identification of tonicity to the status of information whereby the tonic highlights the new information, and the rest of the unit the given information, which remains nonemphasized (Halliday 1967, 1970; Bolinger 1972; Chafe 1974; Ladd 1980; Gussenhoven 1984; Nooteboom and Kruyt 1987; Ladd 1996; Heldner and Strangert 2001; Ward and Birner 2001; Ward and Birner 2003; Halliday and Matthiessen 2014). It is interesting to notice in this sense that contextually predictable words are read faster than the information that is presented for the first time (Lieberman 1963). As mentioned above, for the analysis of interaction from a prosodic pragmatic perspective, Romero-Trillo (1994) proposed the Nuclear Tone theory due to the transformation of the quantitative acoustic measurements to a distinct qualitative classification relating the basic contours of English intonation to the pragmatic functions realized in a specific context. The model follows the premise that each intonation group has a nuclear accent – the primary stressed syllable (Vanderslice and Ladefoged 1972; Crystal 1986) – which is (part of) the word that marks the most salient information in the group. This element functions as the “punting” cognitive element in the specific contextual moment of the conversation. The acoustic relevance of the Nuclear Tone theory is that the nuclear tone coincides with the place of the utterance that realizes the most salient grammatical information, as well as the pragmatic and contextual information.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.015 Published online by Cambridge University Press

14 Prosodic Pragmatics in Context

In acoustic terms, the nuclear tone is characterized by cued phrase-final lengthening (Snow and Balog 2002), and the contour direction of the nuclear tone is mainly used to convey intentionality and attitude. In many cases, this acoustic peak is generally produced toward the right edge of the tone group following the Hallidayan principle of “end focus” (Halliday 1967). However, this general principle – called “unmarked tonicity” – is frequently altered in casual conversation due to the communicative contextual needs related to emphasis and contrast. In these cases, we would speak about “marked tonicity.” For Halliday, intonation is the result of the systemic realization of three different autonomous but interrelated systems that are managed by the speaker according to his/her communicative intentions and the understanding of the context that is shared with the recipient. The three systems are the following: • Tonality; the division of the talk into chunks of information selected by the speaker to organize the message (tone units). • Tonicity: the identification of the nuclear accent. • Tone: the contour direction of the tonic. The representation of the contours of the English essential tones, called “primary tones,” are as follows: • • • • •

Tone 1: falling \ Tone 2: rising / Tone 3: level-(rise) =(/) Tone 4: (rise)-fall-rise (/)\/ Tone 5: (fall)-rise-fall (\)/\

To these primary tones, Halliday identified some standard combinations, called “compound tones,” that are composed of the sequence of the primary tones 13 and 53. The system was completed with a selection of the so-called “secondary tones,” which are slight modifications of the primary ones. Romero-Trillo (2001) enlarged Halliday’s model with the addition of Tone 0 for the cases in which an element has no tonicity or tone, which often occurs in the case of pragmatic markers in final position after the tonic element (Romero-Trillo 2018b).

14.3 Information and Context One of the essential features of the relationship between prosody and pragmatics is the capacity of the speakers to move forward in a conversation in a parallel and coordinated way. This phenomenon has been labeled “Pragmatic punting,” which can be defined as “the cognitive process that certifies that the communicative transfer from the speaker to the listener in a conversation has achieved its goal” (Romero-Trillo 2014: 209). The signals that realize this function can be gestural, e.g., nodding, or vocal/verbal. In the case of vocal-verbal signals, the

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.015 Published online by Cambridge University Press

317

318

JESÚS ROMERO-TRILLO AND YALDA SADEGHI

role of prosody is tantamount to the lexical value of the markers that realize any pragmatic function in conversation (Romero-Trillo and Newell 2012). The notion of “pragmatic punting” comes from the image of a punt sailing along the water with the only aid of a punting pole whose function is both steering and propulsion. Likewise, a conversation flows dynamically in the context via some pragmatic and prosodic cues. These cues – the pragmatic markers – are inextricably linked to their intonation contour, which typically have a falling or level contour when they signal neutral feedback but use a rising tone when they request repetition or a halt in the interaction for clarification or disagreement purposes. Another essential concept in the relationship between prosody and context is the distinction between given and new information, i.e., what is known and not known by the speakers in a conversation, realized through tonicity. Although in the past, and in some language teaching methods, this concept was conceived as a yes/no feature, i.e., tonic vs. non-tonic, most linguists nowadays have opted for a dynamic understanding of this notion, which we will classify as the cognitive, and the discourse-pragmatic approaches. Cognitivists believe that the status of information, i.e., givenness or newness, is dependent on the context represented in the addressee’s consciousness and is related to the speaker’s guess about the shared knowledge between speaker and listener (Chafe 1974; Haviland and Clark 1974; Clark and Haviland 1977; Chafe 1987). Therefore, the information status of some concepts may vary throughout a conversation. The discourse-pragmatic approach assigns the information status on the grounds of recoverability (Geluykens 1991; Romero-Trillo 1993; Halliday and Matthiessen 2014) or evokedness (Prince 1981). In other words, this approach relies on the explicit information found in the immediate context. Therefore, given is “something that is present or derivable from the situation; or simply because the speaker takes it for granted and assumes that the hearer will do likewise” (Halliday 1970: 42), whereas new relates to the “information which the speaker has decided to present as not being already available to the hearer; that is, as something the hearer could not have supplied for himself. It may be something that has not been mentioned before or is unexpected or contrary to what has been implied and so on” (p. 40). In sum, we can say that the focus is what makes the message cognitively salient for the listener, who orients his/her interpretation of the surrounding context vis-à-vis the succession of foci in the speaker’s message. In ordinary face-to-face conversation the listener can also identify the nuclei of the message by observing the speaker’s accompanying gestures in what has been defined as “prosodic pointing” (Madella and Romero-Trillo 2019). However, sometimes paralinguistic phenomena may be absent, as in the case of phone conversations, where only acoustic cues are available to the interactants. On other occasions the paralinguistic cues may be misinterpreted due to different cultural norms in different languages (e.g., in India a quick head wobble typically means “yes, OK”).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.015 Published online by Cambridge University Press

14 Prosodic Pragmatics in Context

14.4 Adaptive Context and Prosody The role of context as a key element in the interpretation of language has been studied since the early 1920s from different linguistic traditions that try to account for the sometimes elusive, but always real, relationship between language and context. This relationship, which has been labeled “contextualism,” can be defined as “the position that the truth-conditions of knowledgeascribing and knowledge-denying sentences (sentences of the form ‘S knows that P’ and ‘S doesn’t know that P’ and related variants of such sentences) vary in certain ways according to the context in which they are uttered” DeRose (1999: 187). The main approaches of contextualism throughout history can be summarized as follows: the ethno-naturalistic approach (Malinowski 1923; Goodwin and Duranti 1992); the conversational approach (Heritage 1984; Pomerantz 1984); the functional-systemic approach (Halliday and Hasan 1989; LeckieTarry 1995); the discourse-semantic approach (Glandzberg 2002; Fetzer and Oishi 2011); and the pragmatic approach (Searle 1969; Levinson 1983; Sperber and Wilson 1986/1995). As it can be observed, the principle of “contextualism” has become increasingly influential, and it is important to highlight that many of the theories share ontological affinities in which the pivoting element is the ascription of different degrees of “radicality,” in the etymological sense of “root.” In other words, theories differ in how radical are utterances in relation to context to understand the conditions in which a given utterance can be more or less open to ambiguity or creativity. The “mild contextualists” will consider that “any piece of contextual information may turn out to be relevant to establishing the correct interpretation for the speech act” (Recanati 2002: 107). More radical approaches to contextualism, like the Graded Silence Hypothesis, advocate for the independent essence of lexical meanings: “coded meanings will be accessed upon encounter, regardless of contextual information or authorial intent” (Giora 2003, 10). In other words, salient meanings are only contextualized by speakers when they collide with context in the first phase of comprehension and, as a result, they require a reinterpretation by the addressee. One of the most relevant approaches that also studies the interaction between L1 and L2 speakers is the socio-cognitive theory, which considers that any act of communication is the realization of a cognitive process that follows a trial-and-error dynamic mental process in a conversation (Kecskes and Fenghui 2009). This theory, developed within the Dynamic Model of Meaning (DMM), avers that the participants in an interaction must share and mutually understand a: (1) “Private context,” i.e., “the world knowledge that is represented in the head of the interlocutors” (Kecskes 2008, 403). (2) “Linguistic context,” the actual linguistic output: “Our mind exists simultaneously both in the head and in the world. So linguistic context is what

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.015 Published online by Cambridge University Press

319

320

JESÚS ROMERO-TRILLO AND YALDA SADEGHI

is uttered (or written) ‘out there’ in the world by a speaker . . . . So the linguistic context is created online” (Kecskes 2006: 234). (3) “Situational context,” defined as “the world knowledge that is outside in the world as interpreted by the interlocutors” (Kecskes 2008, 404). It is important to highlight that for the DMM, the three contexts are equally important and need to co-occur – although not simultaneously – to achieve successful communication. In other words, they can occur at different stages in the communication process: “Both private context and actual situational context have a decisive role in the communication process, but at different stages” (Kecskes 2008: 403). The interest of the DMM and its trial-and-error process is its impossible autonomous verification by the speaker, i.e., it demands the aid of other speakers, or of other objects, that test the veracity of one’s cognitive construct. In other words, I can only know if my utterance has been understood as a promise if the addressee understands it as such and confirms that this is the case. This empirical conception is analogous to the perception of an element: I am certain that an object can roll if my senses (my touch and possibly my sight in this case) verify that this is the case. Therefore, from a contextualist perspective it can be said the objective of any act of communication is to reach mutual comprehension by interlocutors and, as a result, the avoidance of mis/ non-understanding (Bazzanella and Damiano 1999). To understand the role of prosody in contextualism, Romero-Trillo and Maguire (2011) developed the notion of “Adaptive Context” as a complement to the DMM (see Figure 14.1). Adaptive Context can be defined as the process that allows the participants in a conversation to adapt the private, lexical, and situational contextual elements in order to avoid misunderstanding. In other words, Adaptive Context contributes to the scaffolding of information by feeding the prosodic and discursive information through an online positive feedback process. The ultimate function of Adaptive Context is to enable participants in a conversation to reach the most likely optimal meaning from a pragmatic repertoire.

Lexical Context

Adaptive Context Private Context

Situational Context

Figure 14.1 The function of Adaptive Context

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.015 Published online by Cambridge University Press

14 Prosodic Pragmatics in Context

This online positive feedback process is called “contextual sifting,” defined as “the process of cognitive filtering that leaves out the incorrect assumptions in a given communicative situation, and sieves through the correct elements to guarantee successful communication” (Romero-Trillo and Maguire 2011: 234). This theoretical update adds the phenomenon of misunderstanding as an intrinsic and productive mechanism in interaction. The important thing is that this process does not only consider prosodic or pragmatic factors but also includes cultural elements that can interfere in the process (Wierzbicka 2010).

14.5 Pragmatic Markers and Adaptive Context Among the many strategies that speakers have at their disposal for successful communication, acoustic cues are possibly the most efficient to emphasize and make certain elements in the discourse semantically prominent. However, the notion of prominence is a complex issue, especially when communication occurs between native and nonnative speakers of a language. In fact, the mechanics of the suprasegmental features of a language may not be immediately transparent to the learner, and their incorrect use may result in communication failures or, in the long run, in pragmatic fossilization when the grammatical and lexical competence of the language learner evolves at a higher speed than the pragmatic competence, which remains anchored in a prior learning stage (Romero Trillo 2002). Pragmatic markers can be considered the prototypical elements that realize Adaptive Context, as they are used by the addressor and addressee to confirm that a message is processed correctly. In this sense, when misunderstanding arises, pragmatic markers promote the clarification of meaning through supportive strategies – within the realm of Adaptive Context – that do not interfere with the autonomy of the linguistic context of the message, nor with the private and situational contexts. On the contrary, the process guarantees that repair can be triggered at any moment of the interaction without loss of face for the parties. It can be said that Adaptive Context is a positive politeness strategy (Brown and Levinson 1978), as it avoids showing lack of understanding on the part of the addressee and prevents face-threatening comprehension confirmations by the addressor. For this reason, one essential aspect in the study of pragmatic markers is the description of their intonation contour vis-à-vis their contextual realization. From a prosodic perspective, pragmatic markers can appear with multiple intonation patterns and have a distinct prosodic value if they are the only elements in a tone unit, or if they appear inside a tone unit accompanied by other (usually lexical) elements (Romero-Trillo 2012). For example, in the case of English, the use of the pragmatic marker well in the London–Lund Corpus appears with the five primary tones described by Halliday (1967), realizing the function of neutral disagreement in 62.2 percent of the cases

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.015 Published online by Cambridge University Press

321

322

JESÚS ROMERO-TRILLO AND YALDA SADEGHI

(Romero-Trillo 2001). This multiplicity of prosodic features, together with their variation in pragmatic meaning, are the reasons why pragmatic markers are difficult to learn by nonnative speakers of a language (Romero-Trillo 1997; Romero-Trillo and Newell 2012). The following examples from the London–Lund Corpus of Spoken English (Svartik 1990) show the role of pragmatic markers as Adaptive Management tools: (1)

B B A A A

^are you in t\ouch with the St {B/eès} cr/owd# / or / ^w\ell# / you ^kn/ow#. / to a ^certain ext/ent#

In Example (1), the markers “well” and “you know,” each in a separate unit and with diverse tones (falling + rising), indicate the indeterminacy of the response to the question “are you in touch with the St. Bee’s crowd?, or . . .” Here, Adaptive Context would be responsible for the modulation of the response using the pragmatic parkers to show the stance of the speaker and thus help the addressee to adjust his/her cognitive expectations. In fact, the contextual effect would have a completely different orientation if the response had offered no additional elements apart from the direct information, as shown in Example (2): (2)

B B A

^are you in t\ouch with the St {B/eès} cr/owd# / or / to a ^certain ext/ent#

In fact, we can say that Example (2) is probably counterintuitive as the use of a rising intonation in the response – typical of questions – would be anomalous, if it were not preceded by a marker that serves as a pragmatic trampoline to allow for a response with an interrogative intonation. Therefore, we cannot separate the essential function of Adaptive Context from the role of prosody (Romero-Trillo 2001). In fact, it is very likely that the response would have realized a falling intonation, with a meaning of full assertion, if Adaptive Context had not been present, as indicated by Example (3): (3) B B A

^are you in t\ouch with the St {B/eès} cr/owd# / or / to a ^certain ext\ent#

Another interesting fact is that pragmatic markers can complement each other when they appear together. In Example (4) we can see the appearance of one of the two pragmatic markers would give a different meaning to the response: (4) B B A A

^are you in t\ouch with the St {B/eès} cr/owd# / or / ^w\ell# / to a ^certain ext/ent#

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.015 Published online by Cambridge University Press

14 Prosodic Pragmatics in Context

Or alternatively, (5) B B A A

^are you in t\ouch with the St {B/eès} cr/owd# / or / you ^kn/ow# . / to a ^certain ext/ent#

One special case of the use of pragmatic markers in Adaptive Context is when they realize the function of feedback. Feedback can be defined as the use of “some linguistic elements to show that the listener is following the ideas expressed in the message by the speaker” (Romero-Trillo 2001: 536). The use of feedback in a conversation confirms that the message is being processed and accepted by the recipient to maintain the cognitive rhythm of a conversation without disruption. Feedback signals that the participants in a conversation are active in the “here-and-now” coordinates that feature context. In fact, feedback is the most frequently realized function by pragmatic markers in the London–Lund Corpus, totaling the 39.57 percent of the cases (Romero-Trillo 2001).

14.6 Conclusion and Further Research Context is a personal construal of reality that has a dynamic nature and is difficult to share in its full shape with other speakers. In this sense, conversation is the paradigmatic language activity for the cognitive construction of context, as it evolves with each turn, although the shared contextual information between speaker and hearer may differ to the extent that misunderstandings may arise, among other phenomena, with prosodic misinterpretations. We can identify some challenges in prosodic pragmatics, such as the intercultural understanding of acoustic cues and intentionality in relation to emotion research in the narratives of refugees and migrants (RomeroTrillo, 2023). Also, the role of prosodic pragmatics in second language teaching remains a pending issue as a way to transfer the pragmatic competence in the L1 to the pragmatic functions in an L2 through prosody (Romero-Trillo et al. 2022). To sum up, the present chapter has shown the intimate relationship between prosody, information, and context in communication. Starting from the essential acoustic parameters of speech, it has revised the most influential theories of intonation and has illustrated the use of the Nuclear Tone Theory in prosodic pragmatics as an essential tool to understand the communicative process and to avoid misunderstanding through the cognitive adaptation of a message in a specific context. Also, the increasing multimodal approach to the field will surely render very interesting results about the mutual dependency of prosodic pragmatics and context.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.015 Published online by Cambridge University Press

323

324

JESÚS ROMERO-TRILLO AND YALDA SADEGHI

References Bazzanella, C., and Damiano, R. (1999). The interactional handling of misunderstanding in everyday conversations. Journal of Pragmatics, 31, 817–836. Bolinger, D. (1958). A theory of pitch accent in English. Word, 14, 109–149. Bolinger, D. (1972). Accent is predictable (if you’re a mind reader). Language, 37, 83–96. Bolinger, D. (1978). Intonation across languages. In J. H. Greenberg, C. A. Ferguson, and E. A. Moravcsik (eds.), Universals of Human Language, Vol. II: Phonology (pp. 471–524). Stanford: Stanford University Press. Brazil, D. (1975). Discourse Intonation 1/2. Birmingham: Birmingham University Press. Brown, P., and Levinson, S. C. (1978). Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chafe, W. L. (1974). Language and consciousness. Language, 50, 111–133. Chafe, W. L. (1987). Cognitive constraints on information flow. In R. S. Tomlin (ed.), Coherence and Grounding in Discourse (pp. 21–51). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Clark, H. H., and Haviland, S. E. (1977). Comprehension and the given-new contract. In R. D. Freedle (ed.), Discourse Production and Comprehension (pp. 1–40). Norwood: Ablex Publishing Corporation. Cooper, W. E., Eady, S. J., and Mueller, P. R. (1985). Acoustical aspects of contrastive stress in question–answer contexts. Journal of the Acoustic Society of America, 77, 2142–2156. Cruttenden, A. (1997). Intonation, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cruz-Ferreira, M. (1987). Non-native interpretative strategies for intonational meaning. In J. A. Leather and J. Leather (eds.), Sound Patterns in Second Language Acquisition (pp. 103–120). Dordrecht: Foris Publications. Crystal, D. (1986). Prosodic development. In P. J. Fletcher and M. Garman (eds.), Studies in First Language Development (pp. 174–197). New York: Cambridge University Press. De Jong, K., and Zawaydeh, B. (2002). Comparing stress, lexical focus and segmental focus: patterns of variation in Arabic vowel duration. Journal of Phonetics, 30, 53–75. DeRose, K. (1999). Contextualism: An explanation and defense. In J. Greco and E. Sosa (eds.), The Blackwell Guide to Epistemology (pp. 187–206). Oxford: Blackwell. Eady, S. J., and Cooper, W. E. (1986). Speech intonation and focus location in matched statements and questions. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 80, 402–415. Eefting, W. 1991. The effect of ‘information value’ and ‘accentuation’ on the duration of Dutch words, syllables and segments. Journal of the Acoustic Society of America 89: 412–423. Fetzer, A., and Oishi. E., eds. (2011). Context and Contexts: Parts Meet Whole? Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Fry, D. B. (1954). Duration and intensity as physical correlates of linguistic stress. Journal of the Acoustic Society of America, 27, 765–768. Geluykens, R. (1991). Information flow in English conversation: A new approach to the Given-New distinction. In E. Ventola (ed.), Functional and Systemic Linguistics. Approaches and Uses (pp. 141–169). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Giora, R. (2003). On Our Mind: Salience, Context and Figurative Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Glandzberg, M. (2002). Context and discourse. Mind and Language, 17, 333–375.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.015 Published online by Cambridge University Press

14 Prosodic Pragmatics in Context

Goodwin, C., and Duranti, A. (1992). Rethinking context: An introduction. In A. Duranti and C. Goodwin (eds.), Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon (pp. 1–42). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gussenhoven, C. (1984). On the Grammar and Semantics of Sentence Accents. Dordrecht: Foris. Halliday, M. A. K. (1967). Intonation and Grammar in British English. The Hague: Mouton Halliday, M. A. K. (1970). A Course in Spoken English: Intonation. London: Oxford University Press. Halliday, M. A. K., and Hasan, R. (1989). Language, Context and Text: Aspects of Language in a Social-Semiotic Perspective, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Halliday, M. A. K., and Matthiessen, M. I. M. (2014). Halliday’s Introduction to Functional Grammar, 4th ed. Oxford: Routledge. Haviland, S. E., and Clark, H. (1974). What’s new? Acquiring new information as a process in comprehension. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour, 13, 512–521. Heldner, M., and Strangert, E. (2001). Temporal effects of focus in Swedish. Journal of Phonetics, 29, 329–361. Heritage, J. (1984). Garfinkel and ethnomethodology: Developments in Conversation Analysis. Sociolinguistics Newsletter, 1, 1–16. Kecskes, I. (2006). On my mind: Thoughts about salience, context and figurative language from a second language perspective. Second Language Research, 22, 219–237. Kecskes, I. (2008). Dueling contexts: A dynamic model of meaning. Journal of Pragmatics, 40, 385–406. Kecskes, I., and Fenghui, Z. (2009). Activating, seeking, and creating common ground: A socio-cognitive approach. Pragmatics & Cognition, 17, 331–355. Ladd, R. (1980). The Structure of Intonational Meaning: Evidence from English. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Ladd, R. (1996). Intonational Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Leckie-Tarry, H. (1995). Language and Context: A Functional Linguistic Theory of Register. London/New York: Pinter Publishers. Lehiste, I. (1970). Suprasegmentals. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Levinson, S. C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Liberman, P. (1960). Some acoustic correlates of word stress in American English. Journal of the Acoustic Society of America, 32, 451–454. Lieberman, P. (1963). Some effects of semantic and grammatical context on the productions and perception of speech. Language and Speech, 6, 172–187. Madella, P., and Romero-Trillo, J. (2019). Prosodic Pointing in inferential comprehension: The application of Relevance Theory to L2 listening instruction. Letronica 4. http://dx.doi.org/10.15448/1984-4301.2019.4.34157. Malinowski, B. [1923] (1989). The problem of meaning in primitive languages. In C. Ogden and I. Richards (eds.), The Meaning of Meaning (pp. 451–510). New York: Harcourt, Brace and World. Nooteboom, S. G., and Kruyt, J. G. (1987). Accents, focus distribution and the perceived distribution of given and new information: an experiment. Journal of the Acoustic Society of America, 82, 1512–1524. O’Connor, J. D., and Gordon, F. A. (1973). Intonation of Colloquial English. London: Longman.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.015 Published online by Cambridge University Press

325

326

JESÚS ROMERO-TRILLO AND YALDA SADEGHI

Pierrehumbert, J. (1980). The phonology and phonetics of English intonation. Ph.D. dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Pierrehumbert, J., and Hirschberg, J. (1990). The meaning of intonation contours in the interpretation of discourse. In Philip R. Cohen, J. Morgan, and M. E. Polack (eds.), Intention in Communication (pp. 371–411). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Pollock, K. E., Brammer, D. M., and Hageman, C. F. (1993). An acoustic analysis of young children’s productions of word stress. Journal of Phonetics, 21, 183–203. Pomerantz, A. (1984). Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of preferred/dispreferred turn shapes. In J. Atkinson and J. Heritage (eds.), Structures of Social Action (pp. 57–101). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Prince, E. F. (1981). Toward a taxonomy of given-new information. In P. Cole (ed.), Radical Pragmatics (pp. 223–255). London: Academic Press. Ramírez-Verdugo, M. D. (2021). Intonation in L2 Discourse: Research Insights. London: Routledge. Recanati, F. (2002). Does communication rest on inference? Mind & Language, 17, 105–126. Romero-Trillo, J. (1993). Reading aloud and the structure of information. Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad Complutense, 1, 133–142. Romero-Trillo, J. (1994). Ahm, ehm . . . You call it theme? A thematic approach to spoken English. Journal of Pragmatics, 22, 495–509. Romero-Trillo, J. (1997). Your attention please: Pragmatic mechanisms to obtain the addressee’s attention in English and Spanish conversations. Journal of Pragmatics, 28, 205–221. Romero Trillo, J. (2001). A mathematical model for the analysis of variation in discourse. Journal of Linguistics, 37, 527–550. Romero-Trillo, J. (2002). The pragmatic fossilization of discourse markers in non-native speakers of English. Journal of Pragmatics, 34, 769–784. Romero-Trillo,J., ed. (2012). Pragmatics and Prosody in English Language Teaching. Dordrecht: Springer. Romero-Trillo, J. (2014). “Pragmatic punting” and prosody: Evidence from corpora. In M. A. Gómez González, F. J. Ruíz de Mendoza Ibáñez, F. Gonzálvez García, and A. Downing (eds.), The Functional Perspective on Language and Discourse: Applications and Implications (pp. 209–221). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Romero-Trillo, J. (2018a). Corpus pragmatics and second language pragmatics: A mutualistic entente in theory and practice. Corpus Pragmatics, 2, 113–127. Romero-Trillo, J. (2018b). Prosodic modeling and position analysis of pragmatic markers in English conversation. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 14, 169–195. Romero-Trillo, J. (2019). Prosodic pragmatics and feedback in intercultural communication. Journal of Pragmatics, 151, 91–102. Romero-Trillo, J. (2023). “Life is a journey” (literally): Conflict and emotion in the narratives of migrants and refugees. Talk delivered at King’s College London, January 18, 2023. Romero-Trillo, J., and Maguire, L. (2011). Adaptive context: The fourth element of meaning. International Review of Pragmatics, 3, 228–241. Romero-Trillo, J. and Newell, J. (2012). Prosody and feedback in native and non-native speakers of English. In J. Romero-Trillo (ed.), Pragmatics, Prosody and English Language Teaching (pp. 117–132). Dordrecht: Springer.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.015 Published online by Cambridge University Press

14 Prosodic Pragmatics in Context

Romero-Trillo, J., Ramírez-Verdugo, D., Jiménez-Vilches, R., Mestre-Mestre, E., Avila, Ledesma, Sadeghi, N. Y., and Madella, P. (2022). Teaching English Prosodic Pragmatics APP (TEPP). Available in Google Play and Apple Store. Searle, J. (1969). Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Snow, D., and Balog, H. L. (2002). Do children produce the melody before the words? A review of developmental intonation research. Lingua, 112, 1025–1058. Sperber, D., and Wilson, D. (1986/1995). Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell. Svartvik, J. (1990). The London–Lund Corpus of Spoken English: Description and Research. Lund: Lund University Press/Bromley: Chartwell-Brat. Terken, J. (1991). Fundamental frequency and perceived prominence of accented syllables. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 89, 1768–1776. Vanderslice, R., and Ladefoged, P. (1972). Binary suprasegmental features and transformational word-accentuation rule. Language, 48, 819–838. Ward, G., and Birner, B. J. (2001). Discourse and information structure. In D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen, and H. Hamilton (eds.), Handbook of Discourse Analysis (pp. 119–137). Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Ward, G., and Birner, B. J. (2003). Information structure. In L. R. Horn and G. Ward (eds.), Handbook of Pragmatics (pp. 153–174). Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Wierzbicka, A. (2010). Cross-cultural communication and miscommunication: The role of cultural keywords. Intercultural Pragmatic, 7, 1–23.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.015 Published online by Cambridge University Press

327

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.015 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Part IV

Applications of Context Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press

Published online by Cambridge University Press

15 Language Learning and Assessment in Context Dale Koike and Elisa Gironzetti

15.1 Introduction All activity, including language learning, occurs in some kind of context, whether it is acknowledged or not in research. Language is situated behavior: It happens between and among people, at a given time and space, and with certain goals and effects. Language learning, teaching, and assessment, which are subfields of applied linguistics, are particularly sensitive to contextual factors that affect society in a broad sense. The very labels and terminology that are employed in applied linguistics to refer to first/native (L1), second (L2), and heritage (HL) languages reflect the important role of context. The learning of an L11 does not happen without a rich context that provides input and feedback to the baby. Children learn their L1 from their primary caregivers in a familial, informal setting and, only later, expand their knowledge in more formal and public settings through instruction in an institutional context. An L2 learner typically learns the target language in a formal setting after the L1 and can also be exposed to it in informal settings at a later stage, such as during a study abroad experience. The learning of an L2 in institutional settings is also shaped by contextual factors, such as historical events and social trends, theories, policies, ideas that are current at a given time, and the characteristics of the individuals involved. Last, an HL speaker learns the HL in a familial setting, as in the case of an L1, but without the opportunity to expand their knowledge in more formal and public settings until they are older, and only in some cases (see also Valdés 2005). The learning of an HL, like the L1 and L2, is also shaped by educational and societal contexts, and how people use the heritage and dominant languages in their lives. However, the HL represents special contextual circumstances, for which we have included it here. This

1

A discussion about what it means to learn or acquire a language is outside of the scope of this chapter. The interested reader can explore this debate further in Krashen (1981) and Ellis (1989), among others.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.016 Published online by Cambridge University Press

332

DALE KOIKE AND ELISA GIRONZETTI

chapter will discuss all three types of language learning, teaching, and assessment in relation to context in the following sections.

15.2 The Contexts of L1 Learning, Teaching, and Assessment The learning, teaching, and assessment of the L1, regardless of whether it is acquired at home or in school, is a crucial factor in human development, in all capacities (i.e., emotional, cognitive, social, linguistic, etc.). In this section, we begin by discussing internal factors that affect L1 development and how language is learned naturally at home, to then address L1 teaching and assessment in formal educational contexts. In learning an L1, before birth, the developing fetus can hear language through the walls of the mother’s womb, a context devoid of much external linguistic stimuli except for sound. However, the affordance of hearing the mother’s voice and perhaps those around her as she interacts with them starts the child on a journey to learning acoustic features of the mother’s language: phonemes, intonation, pitch, etc. (Partanen et al. 2013). When the baby is born, they begin to receive rich input from the context around them through all their senses (hearing, smell, touch, taste, and even sight), which, coupled with their innate disposition to learn languages, accelerate the language learning process. Absent this context, the baby will fail to learn the language, as documented cases have indicated (e.g., the case of Genie, in Curtiss et al. 1974). One need only look at examples of language-deprived children, which represent severe cases of child abuse, in which the child is usually deprived of linguistic input by strict confinement to a small space, with little to no social interaction. These examples show that context and language learning are inseparable, since due to this type of deprivation, the child cannot fully acquire the language. The L1 learning process in context continues throughout childhood.2 When the child reaches puberty, an age at which the brain loses its plasticity and the child typically undergoes changes that affect their social and personal life, L1 learning does not stop. However, linguistic information is then learned and stored in the brain differently.3 From these facts, we know that language learning is not completely dependent on the world external to the individual, but that the internal processes of the brain, the development of the vocal apparatus, and emotional and social growth of the individual, all play a part in interaction with external context. In addition, when considering L1 learning, 2

3

In this chapter, we discuss the language learning and acquisition process referring to a hypothetical child with no impediment that would affect their development. According to the Critical Period Hypothesis (Lenneberg 1967), after puberty one cannot reach native-like competence in an L2 due to changes in the brain plasticity. Since it was initially proposed in the 1960s, this hypothesis has been largely debated, as there is no consensus on a definition of critical period (some researchers, such as DeKeyser and Larson-Hall 2005, support some form of a critical period, while others reject it; e.g., Bialystok 1997). More recently, age effects initially attributed to the existence of a critical period have been revisited and interpreted as due to personal and societal factors, and not cognition-driven developmental factors (van der Silk et al. 2021).

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.016 Published online by Cambridge University Press

15 Language Learning and Assessment in Context

we must distinguish between formal and informal contexts. On the one hand, in an informal context, the language is learned at home, through interaction with caregivers and family members, where certain functions are regularly expressed in daily living, and language use is limited to intimate and familiar registers. On the other hand, in a formal context, the language is learned at school, where it is used in an institutional setting through writing and the use of additional registers. The latter type of language extends the child’s linguistic domains and registers beyond the intimate and familiar registers, the here and now, to enable them to deal with complexities and abstractions and with the vocabulary and grammar of the institutional and formal domains. This expansion is important to allow broader modes of expression and understanding, to lead into adulthood. However, as we discuss in the next section, for students of a higher socioeconomic status, the difference between home and school language is not as great as it is for students from a lower socioeconomic status or those who belong to a minority group, who may use a distinct and often stigmatized variety of the L1 at home.

15.2.1 Societal Factors in L1 Teaching and Assessment Here, we discuss L1 teaching and learning in formal settings, while considering societal factors related to how language is taught and assessed. Although language instructors may be somewhat free to construct their own curricula, at least in part, they are still largely bound to follow the policies and guidelines set by their supervisors and institutions. Moreover, they also must adhere to the policies, guidelines, and trends set by a commission or department at local, regional, and national levels, which will affect the presentation and evaluation of the material for the students, for both L1 and L2 contexts. Societal trends influence the formation of policies that determine the way languages are taught. As one example for the teaching of L1 in public schools, each state in the United States used to have its own standards for proficiency that set goals for the curricula. But by 2012, a statement of Common Core State Standards4 for English language arts/literacy and mathematics was established for the entire country to follow, built on existing state standards with input from teachers, education experts and their research, and feedback from parents and the public in general. The standards set expectations for two general categories of language education: (a) kindergarten to the end of high school, and (b) college and career readiness. Thus, the belief in a collective effort instead of individual standards established a set of targeted common goals and expectations for language teaching and assessment for the country. On the other hand, the goals themselves have been questioned lately regarding whose language standards should be used, especially in the context of the current heightened tensions in the United States regarding race. While the examples we discuss are from the US context, they are comparable with other 4

See www.corestandards.org/about-the-standards/development-process/.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.016 Published online by Cambridge University Press

333

334

DALE KOIKE AND ELISA GIRONZETTI

countries where racialized practices and discourses are still pervasive in education (Rosa and Flores 2017). To be sure, racial issues in education have been raised before, for example, in the efforts to legitimize Ebonics or the belief that American Black English should be regarded as a language of its own instead of a dialect of English (e.g., Baugh 2000). Even today, the ways in which a language is taught within the school system present challenges, as language policies set by school districts and institutions have been shown to promote the learning and use of certain prestigious varieties of the dominant language over others, thus perpetuating social inequalities and the racialization of minority groups (Rosa 2019). Language policies are a key contextual factor that affects how L1s are learned in school and include activities that influence the structure, function, use, or acquisition of language, are intentional and unintentional, overt and covert, de jure and de facto; and are engaged in by agents across multiple levels of language policy creation, interpretation, and appropriation, from the macro-levels of national planning and policy to the micro-level of language use. (Johnson 2011: 268)

These activities encompass not only actions, but also the underlying beliefs of a community that lead to those actions (Spolsky 2004). In the context of the United States, like other countries with a multilingual and multicultural population, the implementation of policies that conceptualize L1 learning as the mastery of an ill-defined “academic” language modeled on monolingual English (McSwan 2018) affects minority and bilingual learners who are also learning English in school. As we discuss in Section 15.4, an example of how this view of L1 learning negatively affects bilingual learners who enter the school system can be observed in the case of HL speakers. These learners grew up learning their HL at home while being exposed to the dominant language (in the United States, English) in the broader society. When they start school in the majority language, they are often categorized as “English Language Learners” (ELL) for their inability to engage in monolingual language practices (e.g., the use of “academic monolingual English”) or simply because they speak a language other than English (regardless of their English proficiency) and thus are assigned to take remedial courses. The emphasis on academic language in the United State was underscored with the promulgation of the No Child Left Behind law in 2001 that further strengthened the monolingual paradigm in language policy and contributed to widening the literacy gap (Wiley and Rolstad 2014), rather than narrowing it. These language policies for education affect not only what is taught, but also what is assessed and how. As an example, ELLs face numerous difficulties when trying to place out of remedial courses (Lillie et al. 2012; Slama 2012) because the language tests to assess their progress are also based on a monolingual academic language. Language policies, including goals and standardized curricula and assessment, and the informal context of use of a given language, influence which L1 is learned and, in the case of formal learning contexts, how it is taught and

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.016 Published online by Cambridge University Press

15 Language Learning and Assessment in Context

assessed, creating issues yet to be resolved. In the next section, we discuss the multiple ways in which context affects L2 learning, teaching, and assessment, highlighting the societal factors that have shaped the field.

15.3 The Contexts of L2 Learning, Teaching, and Assessment A child can learn two or more languages simultaneously or sequentially, one after the other. Many societies promote bilingualism, and sometimes multilingualism, to enhance intercultural communication and preserve other languages, such as indigenous languages, to some extent. Here we examine the historical and societal events that, throughout the years, informed L2 teaching and learning and L2 assessment in the context of formal education; that is, in institutional settings, such as the classroom, with defined, predetermined goals.

15.3.1 Historical and Societal Contexts of L2 Teaching and Learning The history of L2 teaching and learning approaches and methods is often linked to societal events and scholarly works of broad impact: The popularity of different teaching methods reflects contextual trends of the times while also responding to the limitations of preceding ones. It should be noted, however, that although each new teaching method or approach reacted against some of the principles of prior methods, they still incorporated some elements of previous ones. Here, we review some of the major trends in L2 teaching that characterize the last 100 years as we establish connections among them and with societal and scholarly trends. We also consider the ways in which the view of L2 and L2 learning has changed, specifically regarding the way in which context has figured into the conceptualization of what a language is, as reflected in teaching and assessment practices. Since medieval times in the Western world, the formal teaching of Latin and ancient Greek motivated the application of the Grammar Translation Method (GTM) to the teaching of other L2s. The GTM was employed to teach these classical languages and their grammars so that clerics could learn to read religious and classical texts; thus, when other languages began to be taught in school, the same method was applied. Classes were conducted in the students’ L1 and learning activities included the memorization of declensions and conjugations, grammatical rules that were presented deductively (i.e., explained by the teacher, memorized, and then applied to complete other activities), vocabulary lists, and translations of sentences from one language to the other. No attention was devoted to speaking and listening skills, as the main goal (that is, what learning an L2 meant at the time) was to be able to read literature in the target language and translate a text from the source language into the target language, or vice versa.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.016 Published online by Cambridge University Press

335

336

DALE KOIKE AND ELISA GIRONZETTI

The rise of natural methods in L2 teaching, including the Direct Method5 (DM) during the early 1900s, was linked to studies of L1 development in children, which in turn led scholars to claim the superiority of the spoken language over its written form and to argue for an orally delivered teaching method for L2s. This method prioritized speaking but also promoted a focus on everyday vocabulary and an exclusive use of the target language in class. Typical class activities included highly scripted dialogues that moved beyond the focus on single sentences, seen in the GTM. This method was very popular in Europe until the 1920s, but not as much in the United States, where a focus on reading was preferred (Coleman 1929). The increased mobility and ease of communication among people in the mid-nineteenth century led to more travel to other countries and an interest in speaking other languages, thus paving the way to further developments in L2 teaching. World War II also had a large impact that favored the Audio-Lingual Method (ALM), in answer to a need for military personnel to acquire a nativelike pronunciation in the target L2. The ALM was strongly influenced by structuralism, a movement that conceived of language learning as the learning of the structural properties of a given language, and by the behaviorist theory of learning that emphasized the formation of habits through repetition and practice, thus distancing itself from the previous focus on grammar and translation in the GTM. The rise of the Cognitive Code (CC) approach in the 1960s was a response to Chomsky’s Transformational Generative Grammar model and a growing attention to the brain and psycholinguistic processes in language learning, while also reacting against behaviorist trends (e.g., habit formation and repetition in the ALM) that were popular at the time. Chomsky (1959) emphasized that language derives from an innate capacity of the human mind and is rulegoverned, rather than based on the formation of habits. Under the CC approach, language learners were encouraged to work out grammar rules for themselves, following an inductive learning process (as opposed to a deductive approach followed under the GTM). While during most of the past century L2 pedagogy was dominated by cognitive views of language, understood as a structured, mental system, the last four decades beginning in the 1980s saw increased attention to social views of language as a semiotic and social communication system. This change of orientation first became evident with the rise of the Communicative Approach (CA) to language teaching, possibly the most influential one of the last century. This approach was based on Krashen’s and Terrell’s work on the Natural Approach, which prioritized vocabulary learning in a naturalistic language acquisition process (Krashen and Terrell 1983), derived from Krashen’s 5

The Direct Method, also known as the Natural Method and the Natural Approach, are often confused due to the similarity of their names. Krashen and Terrell (1983) explain that while these share some similarities, the Natural Approach is more in line with other communicative approaches that were popular at that time and focuses on exposure to input and a “silent period” (delayed production of output in the L2). The Natural or Direct Method, originating in the early 1900s in England, denotes the exclusive use of the target language.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.016 Published online by Cambridge University Press

15 Language Learning and Assessment in Context

Monitor Model. This approach emerged as a criticism of the ALM in the United States, and in response to Chomsky’s “competence” and “performance” notions. That is, while Chomsky viewed knowing a language as competence, thus abstracted from its context of use, the CA focused on language learning that emphasized linguistic performance, or the actual use of language in a given communicative context. For the first time, language teaching put principles and concepts of sociolinguistics and pragmatics at the forefront, while syntax and phonology (the teaching of grammar and pronunciation) became relegated to a secondary role. In contrast to previous methods and approaches, the CA is an umbrella term that encompasses different subapproaches and methods that have evolved through the years. Common to all is the idea that the goal of language teaching should be language use, so classroom activities try to expose learners to authentic materials and input as a means to prepare them for using the L2 in real life. The notional-functional and pragmatic approach that took hold in the 1970s and 1980s (Trim et al. 1973) focused on language functions and the realization of speech acts to accomplish concrete actions (e.g., in order to take a trip, one must be able to ask for information, express their needs, complain, etc.). This early CA approach was influenced by research in the linguistic field of pragmatics and the works of Austin (1962) and Searle (1969) on speech acts. It was promoted in Europe as scholars and language experts recognized the need for a common frame of reference for L2 teaching that could promote cooperation and mobility among Europeans. This project is the basis for the development of the standards found in the Threshold Level (Van Ek and Alexander 1980) and its later development into the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR; Council of Europe 2001, 2020). The 1980s gave way to the Intercultural Approach (IA, Byram 1997, 2021), influenced by research in sociolinguistics as well as social anthropology and ethnography, and promoted within the context of the European Union project to foster communication among people from different countries. The IA is based on a view of language as a way to communicate with people who live in a different country, speak a different language, and belong to a different culture. This approach saw an increased interest toward the communicative needs of a group within a given sociocultural context, which translated in the L2 classroom as a focus on the cognitive, affective, and interactional dimensions of communication (see Deardorff 2006, 2009). The 1990s were dominated by Task-Based Instruction (TBI) or Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) (Liddicoat and Scarino 2013; Long 2016), still popular today (see Norris 2021), which emphasized the use of language to accomplish tasks in real life, and the integration of linguistic, cultural, and strategic content in the L2 classroom through a sequence of pedagogical tasks. TBLT originated in the work of Prabhu (1987) with the Bangalore Project, which challenged the idea that L2 learning should be based on direct instruction as in the ALM and aimed at meeting students’ expectations of an authentic, real-life learning experience. The international success of this approach

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.016 Published online by Cambridge University Press

337

338

DALE KOIKE AND ELISA GIRONZETTI

was also supported by research in discourse analysis, which considered communication as the interpretation of meaning based on text but also the interlocutor’s prior knowledge of the world and the context in which communication takes place. The turn of the century saw two more variations of the CA that emerged in part from an increased focus on the psychology of language learning: the Competence-Based Language Teaching (CBLT) approach and the Strategic Approach (SA). CBLT was influenced by behaviorism and was initially employed to teach survival language skills to immigrants. Following this approach, L2 learners were taught the necessary skills to be able to use the language in real-life situations (see Pérez-Cañado 2013, for CBLT in higher education). SA was based on the work of Oxford and colleagues (Oxford 1991; Chamot et al. 1999) and the concept of strategic competence as a component of communicative competence (Canale and Swain 1980). It was influenced by studies on individual variation in L2 acquisition. This approach emphasized teaching not only how to use the L2 in context, but also the resources that learners need to learn the language and communicate in a variety of situations. The latest iteration of the CA is the Sociocultural Approach (SCA), informed by the work of Vygotsky (1978), who believed that all learning (not just L2 learning) depends on interaction with other people. Frawley and Lantolf (1985) were among the first to apply Vygotsky’s work to L2 teaching, promoting a shift toward a more social and interactional view of L2 learning (but also note Hatch’s [1978] earlier work proposing a discourse approach to L2 learning). One example of how the SCA translated into the classroom is the Presentation, Attention, Co-construction, and Extension (PACE) model (Donato and Adair-Hauck 2016), which stressed the role of conceptual thinking, interaction, and dynamic assessment for L2 teaching. Finally, in the last few years there has been a rise in popularity and scholarly interest in a new proposal (not limited to, nor initially developed for L2 teaching) that stems from the work of the New London Group (NLG 1996). The NLG’s pedagogy for multiliteracies considers teaching and educating as political acts (i.e., in the case of L2 learning, the variety of a language that instructors or institutions decide to teach, the texts and authors they use, the cultural perspectives they offer, etc.), and is grounded in critical pedagogy to foster social change through principles of representation, access, and equity (Freire 1970). In this view, texts are the key elements through which teaching and learning take place in a process of textual thinking that considers genres, agents, audience, as well as the sociohistorical context in which those texts were produced, the perspectives they offer, and the ideologies they reflect, among other elements. This model was brought about, in part, by the ubiquity of technology in the modern world and the increasing technological gap between generations and groups of people from different socioeconomic backgrounds. This focus on technology-mediated communication and language use also caused a more conscious effort to work with multimodal texts in L2 teaching, since the focus is gradually shifting from a linguocentric

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.016 Published online by Cambridge University Press

15 Language Learning and Assessment in Context

approach (Erickson 2004) that prioritized verbal language, like nearly all previous L2 teaching approaches and methods, to multimodal communication; thus, including gestures, images, and other semiotic resources that people can mobilize to communicate. As shown through this brief historical overview, the role of context in relation to L2 teaching developments can be seen as twofold, attending to external or internal context with respect to the language classroom and approaches to learning. On the one hand, each language teaching approach or method was influenced by larger societal events, research trends, and prior approaches and methods, in a dynamic and nonlinear progression.6 On the other hand, the ways in which language was conceptualized within each approach also evolved in a more linear fashion, beginning with more decontextualized views that prioritized work with single sentences or even words, and did not consider where, by whom, or why those sentences would be used. Not until multimodal and socially situated approaches to L2 learning arose, in which language and context are treated as inseparable and context is understood broadly, did we see approaches that encompassed political, social, and historical uses of the language. The field of L2 teaching and learning gradually moved from a linguocentric approach aimed at studying forms and did not consider the context beyond the sentence level (e.g., in the GTM), to approaches that place the sociocultural context of language use at the forefront (e.g., in the SCA) and consider the multiple modalities and multiliteracies people employ to communicate (see Young 2009, for a discussion on contexts of learning). This shift affected assessment as well, as the field gradually moved from emphasizing accuracy (as in the GTM) to acknowledging and assessing students’ engagement with the community (community-based service courses), and the ability to reflect critically and draw connections and comparisons across cultures (sociocultural approach, critical pedagogy).

15.3.2 L2 Assessment and Context As described in the previous section, L2 assessment methods and instruments developed concurrently with the emergence of various L2 teaching approaches and the role of context in the conceptualization of what constitutes language in the L2 classroom. Regarding assessment in the GTM, for example, greater emphasis was placed on accuracy while other important contextual aspects, such as who the speaker/writer and the intended audience are, when the sentence was produced and for what purpose, etc., were not considered. Methods and approaches that emphasized communication, such as the CA discussed earlier, introduced the use of question-answer-elaboration oral interactions in the target language and, with them, a broader vision of language 6

Some scholars have argued in favor of a “postmethod” era or condition in language teaching (Kumaravadivelu 2006a) in which teachers should not try to find the perfect method but, rather, make informed choices and choose the most appropriate materials, goals, and classroom techniques and strategies free from the constraints of a given method and based on the consideration of contextual factors.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.016 Published online by Cambridge University Press

339

340

DALE KOIKE AND ELISA GIRONZETTI

that emphasized its use in real-life situations. Thus, assessment could incorporate elements of the real world, such as objects and artifacts that learners could refer to and manipulate, and opportunities were created for learners to express their own thoughts through the target language. With the Natural Method, the emphasis shifted from grammar and writing to speaking, but still with relatively little consideration of the communicative context in which language is used. With the ALM, students’ mastery of the L2 was assessed on the basis of their ability to reproduce sentences following a model provided by the instructor or to respond in the target language based on the input received. As these sentences occurred in artificial dialogues, little consideration was paid to contextual factors such as audience or media, since the emphasis was still placed on form and not meaning. The rise of the Cognitive Code approach shifted the focus of instruction once again toward the mastery of grammar rules and metalinguistic knowledge, leaving no room for learners to focus on the communicative context in which language is used, since Chomsky’s linguistic theory on which it was based was not concerned with linguistic performance but rather linguistic competence. Assessment once again focused on learners’ ability to transform sentences or short texts – for example, from one tense to another – in order to demonstrate their mastery of a given grammatical element. While sentences were often presented within short texts and thus their use was indeed contextualized in a given communicative situation, the communicative context was typically not relevant for the tasks learners were required to perform. With the CA model, assessments changed drastically as the communicative context in which language was used became key and, at times, even more important than accuracy. In fact, the CA was later criticized for not fostering the development of real-life communicative skills (Kumaravadivelu 2006b), not accounting for and so unable to fit different cultural contexts (e.g., Kumaravadivelu 2006b; Littlewood 2007), as well as for teaching skills and concepts that are actually unnecessary because they could be transferred from the L1 (e.g., Swan 1985a, 1985b). Students were no longer required simply to produce grammatically accurate sentences in the target language, but rather intelligible utterances that were appropriate in a given situation (i.e., considering the audience and their communicative purpose). Assessments also featured a prominent oral communication component in the form of role-plays and interviews, and L2 teachers employed more holistic rubrics to assess a wider set of features not limited to (and sometimes not including) grammatical accuracy. With the CA, for example, L2 learners could be required to produce extensive portfolios documenting their communicative abilities in the target language across skills, texts, audiences, and media. The last major change surfaced only recently with a pedagogy for multiliteracies, as teachers and learners were asked to pay attention not only to the immediate communicative context in which the language is used (which, within the CA, was sometimes socially de-contextualized and limited to a set

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.016 Published online by Cambridge University Press

15 Language Learning and Assessment in Context

341

of practical communicative situations), but also to sociocultural and political factors that affect language use, such as the coexistence of Spanish and English in the United States and the ways in which language is used in the public space to define the identity of a neighborhood or community. Working with texts as the main units of meaning (as opposed to sentences in the GTM or questionanswer dialogues in the DM) also reflects the way learners are assessed. A sample instrument is seen in Integrated Performance Assessments (IPAs), which are holistic instruments that integrate principles of dynamic assessment (Adair-Hauck et al. 2006) and emphasize the teaching and formative value of assessment. IPAs are employed not only to determine whether students have met the requirements of a course or unit, but also to help them move forward in their learning in a dialogic and reflective process together with the instructor and other students. IPAs include cultural comparisons and reflections on the inferential meaning of utterances, among other elements. Another example is the development of digital storytelling projects, in which learners can rely on a variety of modes and media to create meaning in the target language. As a review of the main points discussed in Section 15.3, Table 15.1 summarizes the main societal events or trends (column 1) that led to the development of a given method or approach for L2 teaching (column 2), together with sample assessment instruments and foci (column 3), and a brief summary of the role of context in language teaching, learning and assessment (column 4), such as the use of decontextualized written sentences, scripted dialogues, etc. Table 15.1, thus, can be seen horizontally, from the societal context and events to the development of a certain method or approach and their characteristics, or vertically, to show how each category (societal context, SLA methods and approaches, etc.) changed over time.

Table 15.1 Historical overview of the relationship between context and L2 learning

Societal context Formal teaching of Latin and Greek to access religious and classical texts Studies of L1 development in children Mobility, tourism, World War II, behaviorism, structuralism Chomsky’s Transformational Generative Grammar Sociolinguistics and pragmatics

Critical pedagogy, Multimodality

SLA methods and approaches

Assessment

Language in context

Grammar-Translation Method

Translation and conjugation exercises

Decontextualized written sentences

Natural methods, Direct Method Audiolingual Method

Comprehension of simple utterances Question-answer

Repetitions, drills, form and accuracy Highly scripted dialogues Cognitive Code Approach Tests, fill in the blanks, memorization Sentences and short of linguistic rules texts (competence) Communicative Approach Oral interviews, role-plays, Socially de(including IA, TBLT, portfolios, tasks contextualized CBLT, SA, SCA) communicative situations Multiliteracies Integrated Performance Sociocultural and Assessments, digital storytelling political contexts of projects, dynamic assessment language use

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.016 Published online by Cambridge University Press

342

DALE KOIKE AND ELISA GIRONZETTI

Up to this point in this chapter, we have reviewed L1 and L2 learning, teaching, and assessment in contexts of informal and formal instruction from a historical perspective, showing how approaches and practices have changed over the years along with societal and historical developments. We now present in Section 15.4 a unique example of how context has shaped language learning, teaching, and assessment in a very different way, which is the case of heritage language learners.

15.4 The Contexts of Heritage Language Maintenance and Assessment To illustrate another example of how context shapes language teaching, learning, and assessment, we introduce the case of HL learners, which was briefly mentioned in Section 15.2 as an example of how linguistic policies shape the teaching and learning of English in the school system. In broad terms, an HL is a minority language that is learned and spoken mostly in the familial context and coexists with a majority language used for schooling and in other public contexts. It is important to consider that the learning of an HL generally occurs before puberty, when the child has not yet reached what many consider to be the “critical period” of language learning, discussed earlier. In the case of HL speakers of Spanish in the United States, for example, Spanish is the minority language learned at home and usually it is not employed in as many contexts as the majority language, English, which HL speakers learn at school and use when speaking and writing in public spaces in the larger society. Owing to this division of functions of the two languages, and what the HL speakers themselves may perceive as linguistic inadequacies, they may suffer from anxieties and feelings of insecurity when using their HL with Spanish native speakers and even L2 learners of the same language, because their language practices are criticized by native speakers or because they are intimidated by the metalinguistic knowledge of L2 learners (Lynch 2018). The different definitions of an HL and HL speakers that are used today (e.g., Silva-Corvalán 1996; Fishman 2001; Peyton et al. 2001; Valdés 2001; Extra and Yagmur 2002; Van Deusen-Scholl 2003; Duff 2008) attempt to capture the complex dynamics and the social and political contexts that characterize HLs and their speakers. While some of these definitions focus on the linguistic abilities of HL speakers and their bilingual status (the so-called “narrow” definitions), others emphasize the personal connection of the individual with the heritage culture or ethnic group and thus include those HL speakers with limited or no practical knowledge of the language (receptive learners or speakers, emergent bilinguals). In the United States, which is the context with which we the authors are most familiar, Spanish is one of the most important HLs

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.016 Published online by Cambridge University Press

15 Language Learning and Assessment in Context

due to the large numbers of Latinos/as7 in the country and the growing populations of HL learners in the public school system. Spanish heritage learners (SHL) form an important, expanding constituency and the issue of context is a critical factor in their language maintenance. The contexts that form the backdrop of this learner population are discussed in the next section.

15.4.1 Historical, Political, and Societal Contexts of Spanish as a Heritage Language in the United States The Latino/a population in the United States is diverse, and the historical, political, and societal contexts of its people are equally as diverse. Some of the Latino/a communities spread across the country are rooted as indigenous societies (e.g., in the Southwest, discussed below), while most arrived and continue to come as immigrants from various Latin American countries. Most of the immigrant population in the United States over the last thirty years originate in Spanish-speaking countries (e.g., Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba, El Salvador, and the Dominican Republic), but this can vary greatly depending on the particular US region and the specific year. For example, in the Greater Washington area (District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia), a majority of Caribbean and Central Americans families can be found who emigrated from Central America in the 1980s and from the Caribbean in the 1950–1960s. On the other hand, in the southern US border area there has been marked immigration from Central American countries in 2021, mainly due to the factors of political, criminal, and economic strife, conflict, and violence that make life unbearable in their home countries. To understand the relevance and the goals of HL teaching, we now look at the background of one specific example: the Southwestern US region. Much of this area was first claimed by Mexico as part of its territory, independent from Spain, in 1810. However, in 1848, Mexico ceded much of the land via the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo after the Mexican-American war to the United States. What are now Texas and California were annexed around that time as well, and the people who lived in this vast part of the country were largely Spanish-speaking Latinos/as (along with some indigenous peoples as well) (Silva-Corvalán 2001). White settlers soon came to occupy these lands, and colonization began and continued at a rapid pace, often resulting in discrimination and injustices against the Latinos/as. This treatment continued in many areas into modern times until, during the 1960s and 1970s, existing issues of racial discrimination against people of color (i.e., all non-White people) finally surfaced in an expression of anger and rebellion against this treatment and the decades of inequalities of all forms; that is, economic, social, and educational 7

In this chapter, we use the term Latino/a to refer to people of Latin American origins living in the United States, rather than Hispanic, because the latter emphasizes the connection with Spain instead of Latin America, and the Spanish language, which many Latinos/as do not consider a defining factor of their identity.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.016 Published online by Cambridge University Press

343

344

DALE KOIKE AND ELISA GIRONZETTI

disparities and blatant segregation. Many people of color organized themselves into groups and movements. Among the Latino/a communities, we find, for example, La Raza Unida party, the Chicano Power movement, and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), all of which demanded sweeping societal changes (e.g., Martínez and Train 2020). It is against this backdrop of social and political upheaval that the push to rectify discrimination and segregation against Latinos/as in the Southwest, such as in the public school system, was born. García and Castro (2011; as reported in Martínez and Train 2020: 121–123) describe past efforts in this region to change the general high school curricula so that Latino/a students were no longer directed into mainly vocational tracks, to become blue collar workers, but instead were also prepared for higher education possibilities. With the hiring of more Latino/a teachers as well, the curriculum gradually changed to reflect more closely their needs and interests, consider their attitudes and experiences, and become aware of their lived experiences (Martínez and Train 2020). These contexts can shed light on why many SHL in the Southwest may suffer from anxiety and insecurity, especially when confronting situations in which native Spanish speakers from outside their community may use a more prestigious, monolingual variety of Spanish, even though they may not explicitly criticize their language. And these demands for change by the Latinos/as may clarify a crucial difference between the SHL in the American Southwest as opposed to those in other parts of the country, or in other places such as Europe, where the historical context of heritage speakers has been different, usually driven by immigration alone. Efforts made to establish educational programs addressing issues facing the SHL population are described in the next section.

15.4.2 Spanish as a Heritage Language in Instructional Contexts in the United States Here we describe the instructional contexts that have been created to foster the maintenance and expansion of SHL in the United States. The background factors and developments described in Section 15.4.1 form the backdrop for schools to implement language programs that could be successful in teaching SHL learners, who have different characteristics from L2 learners. Their familial ties to the language, cultures, and communities, their historical background, the decades of prejudice, segregation, and insistence on assimilation into the larger American society and learning the English language (see Section 15.2 on the monolingual paradigm), not to mention the criticism of the Spanish variety they speak, have all had a great effect on whether or not SHL speakers maintain their HL, especially as there is greater assimilation into the general English-speaking society as time goes on (e.g., Zyzik 2016). The Pew Research Center reported that in 2015, 13.5 percent of US Latinos/ as were born in the United States, a number with important ramifications for the maintenance of Spanish (Potowski and Carreira 2010). That is, often as the

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.016 Published online by Cambridge University Press

15 Language Learning and Assessment in Context

generations move from the first to the second and so on over time, fewer Latinos/as speak Spanish at home and encourage their children to speak it, so by the third generation, the number of Latinos/as who speak Spanish is much smaller, pointing to Spanish language loss. Between 2006 and 2015, the use of Spanish was reported to have declined (Krogstad and López 2017), partly due to the societal challenges that US Latinos/as regularly face, and the fact that most of the US Latino/a population does not believe that speaking Spanish is a key part of their identity; that is, it is not necessary to speak Spanish to consider oneself Latino/a (Pew Research Center 2015). At the same time, the census numbers also indicate that the population of Latino/a students in the school system is growing, and separate linguistic needs related to Spanish must be addressed, such as placement tests, communicating with parents to foster maintenance of the home language, school counseling, types of language courses offered, teacher preparation, and measures to ensure HL learners are not placed in L2 courses by default. Nevertheless, improvements have been made regarding Spanish language education for SHL, which are described next. Considering the contexts that shape the life of SHL speakers and their educational experiences in the United States, several recommendations for teaching SHL have been proposed, initially as a set of five core goals for HL teaching (Valdés 1995) and later expanded to reflect advances in the field (Martínez 2016; Valdés 2000). These recommendations, and the contextual motivations behind each one, are summarized as follows: (a) Because the home language tends to be used orally and for the domain of the home and intimate relationships, if at all, language use for other domains (e.g., academics, work) and language skills (writing, reading) develop in English. This usage indicates a need for work in contexts of more formal genres and in the reading and writing modalities in Spanish (Zyzik 2016; Shively 2018). (b) Owing to the linguistic insecurities and issues of identity and ideologies that many SHL face when learning their heritage language, these should be addressed in the curriculum. At the same time, the wide range of ideologies, communities, and cultural connections with Hispanic roots that are present in the SHL population need to be recognized and fostered (e.g., Fairclough 2016; Showstack 2017). (c) Because SHL learners’ proficiency in Spanish as a group varies greatly, their differences (strengths and weaknesses) need to be acknowledged and considered when designing a language course curriculum. Some SHL learners can speak and write in Spanish, while others display various degrees of bilingualism, with some able to understand only a few words and phrases of given speech registers as receptive bilinguals (e.g., Belpoliti and Gironzetti 2018). In terms of approaches to teaching and assessment, the field of HL teaching has undergone a movement parallel to that described for L2 teaching

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.016 Published online by Cambridge University Press

345

346

DALE KOIKE AND ELISA GIRONZETTI

(Gironzetti and Belpoliti 2018). In its beginnings, it was characterized by a strong focus on grammatical accuracy as well as reading and writing, due to the influence of established practices in L2 pedagogy. The goal was to focus on linguistic information with which HL learners are usually unfamiliar, such as conventions of Spanish orthography, given their experiences with the oral and aural modalities. More recently, scholarly work and pedagogical efforts began to consider and give a more prominent role to affective, identity, cultural, and community-related factors and their relevance for language maintenance and expansion. HLs are valued and recognized in the classroom not only as communicative tools, but also for their ties to the family, community, and culture. Considering this recent shift, researchers argue that an effective HL program requires several important aspects that impact teaching practices as well as assessment goals and instruments. For example, Belpoliti and Gironzetti (2018) propose fostering a connection with the Spanish heritage community, addressing issues of identity, understanding language ideologies (e.g., Leeman 2012), expanding knowledge of Spanish registers and dialects (e.g., Fairclough 2016), and promoting literacy and knowledge of various discourse genres (e.g., argumentative texts). However, HL programs and instructors often struggle to find a balance between a narrower, linguocentric view of SHL, and a broader, multimodal, and humanistic one. A good example that strives to integrate both views in a meaningful way is the Sabine Ulibarrí SHL program at the University of New Mexico, which is one of the largest and most enduring in the country. The introductory courses in this program prioritize learners’ identity and their affective connections with Spanish, focusing on building their confidence and recognizing the value of the language and cultures associated with it, rather than centering exclusively on language accuracy or linguistic skills. Subsequent courses introduce more linguistic- and accuracyoriented goals toward the expansion of learners’ repertoire as well as continue to foster the development of their critical skills and an appreciation of their identity.

15.5 Future Trends and Implications In this chapter, we have shown relationships that exist between contextual factors and events, and language learning and assessment in L1, L2, and HL learning, teaching, and assessment. We have shown that, at least in the United States, L1 (language arts) teaching and assessment policies are largely determined at local, regional, and national levels, while in the case of L2 and HL language learning, teaching, and assessment, there has been a plethora of language theories, policies, approaches, and methods that aim at teaching the language according to each institution’s program and goals. Numerous changes have occurred over time regarding which and how languages are taught and assessed.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.016 Published online by Cambridge University Press

15 Language Learning and Assessment in Context

The profile of L1 learners is changing due to globalization, increased mobility, and the ubiquity of technology. Instructors of L1 at the elementary and secondary level are now teaching a more diverse student body that comprises not only monolingual L1 speakers, but also multilingual speakers who may not share the same L1 but are, nonetheless, learning the dominant language in school. The case of HL speakers in the United States is a clear example, but this situation is also a pressing reality in other countries (e.g., on Spanish as a minority or heritage language outside of the United States, see chapters 30 to 36 in Potowski 2018). We expect this trend will not stop and will eventually shape not only the teaching practices at the classroom level, but also, in a bottom-up fashion, institutional guidelines and language teaching policies at the state level. If L1 teaching is to serve the needs of our students, then L1 policies need not be modeled after a monolingual and ill-defined academic register but rather consider the richness of the multilingual practices students bring to the classroom. As societal trends and events and scholarly research continue to have an impact on the field, we also witness changes in how language is conceptualized. In the last decades, we have seen a gradual move toward a more humanistic, interdisciplinary, and less cognitive-focused approach to language teaching and assessment that places more emphasis on social, political, and affective factors of language use. At the same time, there is a growing interest in the different modalities and media that humans rely upon for communication, in part due to globalization and the impact of technology. From this perspective, then, language is seen as a complex dynamic system of conventions that transcend verbal language to include other semiotic resources that people mobilize to create meaning, such as facial expressions or gestures. This broader conceptualization of language is having an impact on language teaching and assessment, and current proposals such as multimodal and multiliteracies approaches stress that language learning should be fostered by all these elements. Just as history has shaped our language teaching and assessment practices over time, we are witnessing at this moment how the use of technology has affected our teaching and assessment practices, especially with regard to languages. Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, the need to use technological innovations to connect with learners at a distance, and to adapt our practices, materials, and syllabi to this mode of delivery, have greatly affected the field. While the pedagogical approaches to teach L2s may not necessarily have changed notably due to the use of online tools, many instructors and students faced new challenges with regard to equity and access to education, assessment, and learners’ agency. Online teaching has the potential of reaching a wider student population, including those who live in rural areas or far away from schools. At the same time, it has also brought attention to the existing technology gap, as many students still do not have reliable internet capabilities at home or access to a computer to attend online classes. Similarly, assessment instruments have had to transform to allow for online

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.016 Published online by Cambridge University Press

347

348

DALE KOIKE AND ELISA GIRONZETTI

communication (e.g., storytelling projects, blogs), often assuming students and teachers already possess technology literacy instead of recognizing the need for a multiliteracies-oriented pedagogy. Finally, students’ motivation, affect, and self-regulation assume even greater importance in the success of an online language program (Mercer 2011), as individual learners’ agency is key in a context in which instructors and students do not share a physical space or students may have to work independently more often. The fields of language teaching and assessment await new contexts in the future.

References Adair‐Hauck, B., Glisan, E. W., Koda, K., Swender, E. B., and Sandrock, P. (2006). The Integrated Performance Assessment (IPA): Connecting assessment to instruction and learning. Foreign Language Annals, 39(3), 359–382. Austin, J. (1962). How to Do Things with Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Baugh, J. (2000). Beyond Ebonics: Linguistic Pride and Racial Prejudice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Belpoliti, F., and Gironzetti, E. (2018). Hablantes de herencia. In J. Muñoz-Basols, E. Gironzetti, and M. Lacorte (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Spanish Language Teaching: Metodologías, Contextos y Recursos para la Enseñanza del Español L2 (pp. 447–462). London: Routledge. Bialystok, E. (1997). The structure of age: In search of barriers to second language acquisition. Second Language Research, 13(2), 116–137. Byram, M. (1997). Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Byram, M. (2021). Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence. Revisited. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Canale, M., and Swain, M. (1980). Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. Applied Linguistics, 1, 1–47. Chamot, A., Barnhardt, S., El-Dinary, P., and Robbins, J. (1999). The Learning Strategies Handbook. Boston, MA: Addison Wesley Longman. Chomsky, N. (1959). A review of B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behaviour. Language, 35(1), 26–58. Coleman, A. (1929). The Teaching of Modern Foreign Languages in the United States: A Report Prepared for the Modern Foreign Language Study (Vol. 12). New York: Macmillan. Council of Europe. (2001). Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment. Strasbourg: Council of Europe. Council of Europe. (2020). Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment. Companion volume. Strasbourg: Council of Europe. Curtiss, S., Fromkin, V., Krashen, S., Rigler, D., and Rigler, M. (1974). The linguistic development of Genie. Language, 50(3), 528–554. Deardorff, D. (2006). Identification and assessment of intercultural competence as a student outcome of internationalization. Journal of Studies in International Education, 10(3), 241–266.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.016 Published online by Cambridge University Press

15 Language Learning and Assessment in Context

Deardorff, D. (2009). The SAGE Handbook of Intercultural Competence. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. DeKeyser, R., and Larson-Hall, J. (2005). What does the critical period really mean? In J. F. Kroll and A. M. B. de Groot (eds.), Handbook of Bilingualism: Psycholinguistic Approaches (pp. 109–127). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Donato, R., and Adair-Hauck, B. (2016). PACE: A story-based approach for dialogic inquiry about form and meaning. In J. Shrum and E. Glisan (eds.), Teacher’s Handbook: Contextualized Foreign Language Instruction, 5th ed. (pp. 206–230). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning. Duff, P. (2008). Heritage language education in Canada. In D. Brinton, O. Kagan, and S. Bauckus (eds.), Heritage Language Education (pp. 71–90). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Ellis, R. (1989). Understanding Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Erickson, F. (2004). Origins: A brief intellectual and technological history of the emergence of multimodal discourse analysis. In P. LeVine and R. Scollon (eds.), Discourse and Technology. Multimodal Discourse Analysis (pp. 196–207). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Extra, G., and Yagmur, K. (2002). Language Diversity in Multicultural Europe: Comparative Perspectives on Immigrant Minority Languages at Home and at School. Paris: UNESCO/The Most Programme. Fairclough, M. (2016). Incorporating additional varieties to the linguistic repertoires of heritage language learners. In S. Beaudrie, M. Fairclough, and A. Roca (eds.), Innovative Strategies for Heritage Language Teaching (pp. 143–165). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Fishman, J. (2001). 300-plus years of heritage language education in the United States. In J. K. Peyton, D. A. Ranard, and S. McGinnis (eds.), Heritage Languages in America: Preserving a National Resource (pp. 81–98). Washington, DC/McHenry, IL: Center for Applied Linguistics & Delta Systems. Frawley, J., and Lantolf, J. P. (1985). Second language discourse: A Vygotskyan perspective. Applied Linguistics, 6, 19–44. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Seabury Press. García, M., and Castro, S. (2011). Blowout! Sal Castro and the Chicano Struggle for Educational Justice. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Gironzetti, E., and Belpoliti, F. (2018). Investigación y pedagogía en la enseñanza del español como lengua de herencia (ELH): Una metasíntesis cualitativa. Journal of Spanish Language Teaching, 5, 16–34. Hatch, E. (1978). Discourse analysis and second language acquisition. In E. Hatch (ed.), Second Language Acquisition (pp. 401–435). Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Johnson, D. C. (2011). Critical discourse analysis and the ethnography of language policy. Critical Discourse Studies, 8(4), 267–279. Krashen, S. (1981). Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Krashen, S., and Terrell, T. (1983). The Natural Approach: Language Acquisition in the Classroom. New York: Macmillan. Krogstad, J. M., and López, M. (2017). Use of Spanish Declines among Latinos in Major U.S. Metros. www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/10/31/use-of-spanish-declinesamong-latinos-in-major-u-s-metros/.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.016 Published online by Cambridge University Press

349

350

DALE KOIKE AND ELISA GIRONZETTI

Kumaravadivelu, B. (2006a). Understanding Language Teaching: From Method to Postmethod. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Kumaravadivelu, B. (2006b). TESOL methods: Changing tracks, challenging trends. TESOL Quarterly, 40(1), 59–81. Leeman, J. (2012). Investigating language ideologies in Spanish as a heritage language. In S. Beaudrie and M. Fairclough (eds.), Spanish as a Heritage Language in the United States: The State of the Field (pp. 43–59). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Lenneberg, E. (1967). Biological Foundations of Language. New York: Wiley. Liddicoat, A., and Scarino, A. (2013). Intercultural Language Teaching and Learning. Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell. Lillie, K., Markos, A., Arias, M. B., and Wiley, T. (2012). Separate and not equal: The implementation of structured English immersion in Arizona’s classrooms. Teachers College Record, 114(9), 1–33. Littlewood, W. (2007). Communicative and task-based language teaching in East Asian classrooms. Language Teaching, 40(3), 243–249. Long, M. (2016). In defense of tasks and TBLT: Nonissues and real issues. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 36, 5–33. Lynch, A. (2018). A historical view of US Latinidad and Spanish as a heritage language. In K. Potowski (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Spanish as a Heritage Language (pp. 17–35). London: Routledge. MacSwan, J. (2018). Academic English as standard language ideology: A renewed research agenda for asset-based language education. Language Teaching Research, 24, 1–9. Martínez, G. (2016). Goals and beyond in heritage language education: From competencies to capabilities. In M. Fairclough and S. Beaudrie (eds.), Innovative Strategies for Heritage Language Teaching (pp. 39–55). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Martínez, G., and Train, R. (2020). Tension and Contention in Language Education for Latinxs in the United States: Experience and Ethnics in Teaching and Learning. London: Routledge. Mercer, S. (2011). Understanding learner agency as a complex dynamic system. System, 39(4), 427–436. New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Review, 66(1), 60–92. Norris, J. M. (2021). The long road to TBLT: 40 years of innovation, investigation, and inspiration. TASK, 1(2), 162–183. Oxford, R. (1991). Language Learning Strategies: What Every Teacher Should Know. New York: Newbury House. Partanen, E., Kujala, T., Näätänen, R., Liitola, A., Sambeth, A., and Huotilainen, M. (2013). Learning-induced neural plasticity of speech processing before birth. PNAS, 110(37), 15145–15150. Pascual y Cabo, D. (2018). Spanish as a heritage language in the US: Core issues and future directions. In K. Geeslin (ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Hispanic Linguistics (pp. 478–495). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pérez-Cañado, M. L., ed. (2013). Competency-Based Language Teaching in Higher Education. New York: Springer.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.016 Published online by Cambridge University Press

15 Language Learning and Assessment in Context

Pew Research Center. (2015). National Survey of Latinos. www.pewhispanic.org/2016/ 06/08/latinos-increasingly-confident-in-personalfinances-see-better-economictimes-ahead/ph_2016-06-08_nsl-economy-12/. Peyton, J. K., Ranard, D. A., and McGinnis, S. (2001). Heritage Languages in America: Preserving a National Resource. Language in Education: Theory and Practice. Washington, DC/McHenry, IL: Center for Applied Linguistics & Delta Systems. Pienemann, M., and Johnston, M. (1987). Factors influencing the development of language proficiency. In D. Nunan (ed.), Applying Second Language Acquisition Research (pp. 45–141). Adelaide: National Curriculum Resource Center. Potowski, K., ed. (2018). The Routledge Handbook of Spanish as a Heritage Language. London: Routledge. Potowski, K., and Carreira, M. (2010). Spanish in the USA. In K. Potowski (ed.), Language Diversity in the United States (pp. 66–80). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Prabhu, N. S. (1987). Second Language Pedagogy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rosa, J., and Flores, N. (2017). Unsettling race and language: Toward a raciolinguistic perspective. Language in Society, 46(5), 621–647. Rosa, J. (2019). Looking Like a Language, Sounding Like a Race: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and the Learning of Latinidad. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Searle, J. (1969). Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shively, R. (2018). Spanish heritage speakers studying abroad. In K. Potowski (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Spanish as a Heritage Language (pp. 403–419). London: Routledge. Showstack, R. (2017). Spanish identity among Latinos in the US. In Kim Potowski (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Spanish as a Heritage Language (pp. 92–106). London: Routledge. Silva-Corvalán, C. (1996). Language Contact and Change. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Silva-Corvalán, C. (2001). Sociolingüística y Pragmática del Español. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Slama, R. B. (2012). A longitudinal analysis of academic English proficiency outcomes for adolescent English language learners in the United States. Journal of Educational Psychology, 104(2), 265. Spolsky, B. (2004). Language Policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Swan, M. (1985a). A critical look at the communicative approach (1). ELT Journal, 39(1), 2–12. Swan, M. (1985b). A critical look at the communicative approach (2). ELT Journal, 39(2), 76–87. Trim, J. L. M., Richterich, R., van Ek, J. A., and Wilkins, D. A. (1973). Systems Development in Adult Language Learning: A Unit-Credit System for Modern Language Learning by Adults. Strasbourg: Council of Europe. Valdés, G. (1995). The teaching of minority languages as academic subjects: Pedagogical and theoretical challenges. The Modern Language Journal, 79(3), 299–328. Valdés, G. (2000). Introduction. In L. Sandstedt (ed.), Spanish for Native Speakers: AATSP Professional Development Series Handbook for Teachers K-16 (Vol. 1, pp. 1–20). New York: Harcourt College.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.016 Published online by Cambridge University Press

351

352

DALE KOIKE AND ELISA GIRONZETTI

Valdés, G. (2001). Heritage language students: Profiles and possibilities. In J. Peyton, J. Ranard, and S. McGinnis (eds.), Heritage Languages in America: Preserving a National Resource (pp. 37–80). Washington, DC/McHenry, IL: Center for Applied Linguistics and Delta Systems. Valdés, G. (2005). Bilingualism, heritage language learners, and SLA research: Opportunities lost or seized? The Modern Language Journal, 89, 410–426. van der Slik, F., Schepens, J., Bongaerts, T., and van hout, R. (2021). Critical Period Claim revisited: Reanalysis of Hartshorne, Tenenbaum, and Pinker (2018) suggests steady decline and learner-type differences. Language Learning, 72(1), 9–112. Van Deusen-Scholl, N. (2003). Toward a definition of heritage language: Sociopolitical and pedagogical considerations. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, 2(3), 211–230. van Ek, J., and Alexander, L. G. (1980). Threshold Level English in a European Unit/ Credit System for Modern Language Learning by Adults. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wiley, T. G., and Rolstad, K. (2014). The Common Core state standards and the great divide. International Multilingual Research Journal, 8(1), 38–55. Young, R. F. (2009). Discursive Practice in Language Learning and Teaching. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Zyzik, E. (2016). Toward a prototype model of the heritage language learner. In M. Fairclough, S. Beaudrie, A. Roca, and G. Valdés (eds.), Innovative Strategies for Heritage Language Teaching: A Practical Guide for the Classroom (pp. 19–38). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.016 Published online by Cambridge University Press

16 Linguistic Creativity and Humor in Context Delia Chiaro

16.1 Introduction Humor depends entirely on context; without it, humor could not exist. In order to get a joke, a wisecrack or an internet meme, we need to understand its frame of reference because both in its creation and in its reception, humor is inextricably linked to its setting. Incongruity, an essential feature of humor, consists in the inappropriateness of what we expect to be said, see, or hear in a certain situation. From the person who slips on the unseen banana skin to the clown who receives a custard pie in the face, a defeat in our expectations may spark a humorous response, so it is essential that we know what those given expectations are. This chapter will focus on spoken and written banana skins and custard pies, namely verbally expressed humor, that is to say, instances of humor that pivot mainly, although not necessarily exclusively, on humor that occurs either in speech or in writing. Although in a sense, the fact that verbally expressed humor deals with words may appear manifest, occurrences of humor in speech and writing rarely stand alone. A humorous trope, such as a joke, that is delivered orally is likely to be accompanied by significant facial expressions, body movement, gesture, and a judicious use of timing. Instances of humor in written form may occur in prose or online within an internet meme or in a text message accompanied by an emoji or a gif. The specificity of the term verbally expressed humor (VEH) allows us to select and center on the spoken and written aspects of humor even if it takes place within a wider setting. Having established this, however, as with all manifestations of language, VEH (Chiaro 2005) does not occur in a void and both its making and its response will rely on a wider setting, in other words, on context. Humor is a fuzzy concept. Although we all know what it is, it is an extremely complex notion that is everything but easy to define. Numerous philosophers and intellectuals from Ancient Greece to the present day have endeavored to define humor, so I shall certainly not attempt to do so. For the purposes of this chapter, my use of the term will rest on my favorite and somewhat jolly

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.017 Published online by Cambridge University Press

354

DELIA CHIARO

definition provided by linguist Wallace Chafe, namely “that feeling of nonseriousness” (2007). While I am uneasy about defining something by what it is not, rather than what it is, I would rather employ this simple definition than get involved in designations that are entangled in humor’s cognitive, psychological, and sociological underpinnings, not to mention its close connection with such disparate emotions as happiness and disgust. Furthermore, it would be easy to become ensnared by the notion of sense of humor which, for those who possess it, is considered a positive personality trait. If humor is indeed “that feeling of non-seriousness”; having a sense of humor (SOH) may well be a virtue. SOH plays an important role in the felicitous outcome of interactions involving VEH but, to complicate matters further, we can never be quite sure whether an unresponsive recipient of VEH does not have a particularly strong SOH or whether they are simply unamused. As SOH depends on a combination of both state and trait, you might certainly have a great SOH under normal circumstances but not if you have just been through a traumatic experience (for an extensive discussion of SOH, see Martin 1998; Ruch 1998). Finally, and possibly most importantly, humor involves moral proximity and/ or distance between the humorous content conveyed by the speaker and received by the listener. Humor and its sister, laughter, have to do with comity, since both act as a social glue but can also be divisive depending, for example, on our closeness to a mocked target or our sensitivity to an object of ridicule. What I am getting at is that it is all very well to take a joke, a funny story, or an internet meme and parse it, link it to a number of well-known theories that range from incongruity and superiority to purely linguistic models, by depriving humor of its context; we are only up to speed with half the story. Without knowing who made the humorous remark, where, when, and to whom, we cannot become familiar with its whys and its wherefores, and we may well find ourselves, as has often been said of humor research, dissecting a frog. According to Pinker (2011), one of the reasons humans understand language better than computers lies in the difficulty of programming machines with all the knowledge we have. He argues that comedies often use robots’ lack of such extensive knowledge as a source of humor. A running joke in the sixties’ sitcom Get Smart, featuring Maxwell Smart and a robot called Hymie, consists of Maxwell asking the android to “Give me a hand.” Whenever Hymie hears this utterance, he will physically break off his hand and pass it over to Maxwell. Of course, Hymie does not understand that in context “give me a hand” is a request for help and not a literal call for him to detach his hand and deliver it to the speaker. It is the lack of pragmatic knowledge that is responsible for the misunderstanding and that in turn triggers the joke. VEH is very much about this kind of (mis)understanding of contextual knowledge. Although Attardo and Raskin’s (1991) linguistic theory of humor is one of abstract competence unaffected by context, providing us with a hypothesis that pivots upon linguistic ambiguity, incongruity, and the notion of opposing and overlapping scripts, their perspective, and several more, can be appreciated in terms of misplaced context.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.017 Published online by Cambridge University Press

16 Linguistic Creativity and Humor in Context

Context is of course an enormous topic, and I propose to limit my examination to linguistic play that relies for its ambiguity on context, and a selection of humorous phenomena that depend on context in interesting ways. In fact, humor and context concern a vast area of scholarship that touches several disciplines – if we consider linguistics alone, it involves at the very least semantics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and translation studies. This chapter can therefore provide only a short overview of where the two meet (see Attardo 2020 for an exhaustive discussion). Following an outline of the variety of linguistic resourcefulness required in its creation – brief owing to the breadth of such a huge topic – I will explore the intersection of linguistic and sociocultural competences necessary in order to understand VEH and the impact of context in both its construction and its reception. Backed up by examples, I will argue that the creation of VEH mirrors unintentional slips of the tongue, as both display an identical breach of the indistinctness that is present in and across all formal aspects of language. Following an overview of some of the linguistic technicalities involved in creating VEH, I will examine how the lack of conversational cooperation can also create humor, briefly touching on tropes such as irony and sarcasm. I will conclude this overview with a discussion of the role that context and moral distance between the object of humor and its recipient play in humorous discourse and survey whether it is acceptable to make fun of delicate issues, and if so, where, when, and with whom it might be appropriate to be funny about taboo subjects.

16.2 Humor and Linguistic Creativity All languages when used for specific purposes display a series of distinct characteristics. Legalese will differ from the language of science and technology, academic discourse will be quite diverse from journalistic genres and the language of knitting is likely to be different from that of dressmaking. These genres, whether scientific, academic, or within the realm of everyday reality, exemplify a sort of baseline of serious discourse in the sense that none is designed to amuse the recipient but to inform, explain, instruct, and so forth. On the contrary, humorous discourse, which aims to amuse, is strikingly different from such “serious” varieties owing to its extreme intricacy on numerous linguistic levels. This is not to say that serious discourse cannot be intricate, but I emphasize the word extreme. While the intricacy of legalese or a knitting pattern are due to the presence of highly context-specific lexis and syntactic structures, unlike humorous discourse they are devoid of occurrences of linguistic manipulation or distortion. Whether we are looking at a joke, a single comic utterance or a lengthy funny story, when it comes to VEH, we are dealing with exemplars of a special kind of linguistic inventiveness in which the speaker stretches and twists language rules, and at the same time, if the humorous utterance occurs in conversation, may intentionally and

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.017 Published online by Cambridge University Press

355

356

DELIA CHIARO

legitimately flout maxims. The creation of VEH is not simply a matter of adopting specific lexis, register, or convention, as in more serious genres. In order to create VEH, linguistic norms require distortion and the recipient, at least for part of the content of the incoming message, needs to be deceived through that very same manipulation. In fact, the effort involved in the construction of VEH is such that it led Charles Hockett (1977) to define the joke form in terms of “layman’s poetry,” arguing that, like traditional verse, it is founded on the extreme exploitation of language to create the desired effect, which, in the case of the joke, is to amuse. Where traditional poetry exploits features of a language, such as rhyme, assonance, and rhythm, jokes – and by extension all VEH in general – capitalize on the ambiguity present at all levels of language from its sounds and its syntactic and grammatical structures, all the way up to its semantic properties and pragmatic functions, to create a humorous outcome. In addition, Hockett argues that the joke, like poetry, is arguably untranslatable, in the sense that, owing to the fact that no two languages possess identical formal features, upon which poetry heavily depends, much will be lost in translation. Luckily, for those who do not speak several foreign languages, poetry is indeed translated, but by default, the translated versions will differ to a certain extent from the target texts. Certainly, more is lost in the translation of poetry (and by extension literature tout court) than, say, a paper on mathematics. Jokes, for the same reason, are equally untranslatable. For an extensive discussion of the complexity involved in translating humor and the strategies employed to overcome them, see Chiaro (2008, 2017). In his reflections on puns, the eighteenth-century essayist Joseph Addison went as far as to claim that if you cannot translate a “Piece of Wit,” it consequently must be a pun: a conceit arising from the use of two words that agree in the Sound, but differ in the Sense. The only way therefore to try a Piece of Wit, is to translate it into a different language: If it bears the Test, you may pronounce it true; but if it vanishes in the Experiment, you may conclude it to have been a Punn. (Addison and Steele [1711] 1982: 343)

The punster thus engages in creativity at all levels of language by manipulating sounds, words, and syntax to generate something that is likely to lose its humorous function if translated into another language. Let us consider the following example that pivots, among other things, on the exploitation of the complexity of English phonology and its writing system: Q. How do you make a cat drink? A. Easy. Put it in a liquidizer and you get a cat drink.

This rather cruel and politically incorrect riddle shows that in the phrase “cat drink,” by placing stress on the term drink (i.e., cat DRINK) and giving it phonological prominence, the speaker is leading their recipient up a garden path by having them believe that they are being questioned on ways of

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.017 Published online by Cambridge University Press

16 Linguistic Creativity and Humor in Context

quenching a feline’s thirst. The desired response, instead, is determined by a shift in prominence in what would otherwise seem to be an identical question. However, the question is different once contextualized by the answer. To justify the answer, prominence that had previously fallen on drink now falls on the term cat (i.e. CAT drink). In other words, noun + verb becomes and is to be understood as a compound noun. If someone reads the riddle, rather than hearing it, a similar reaction occurs when they see the answer that will make them double back on their first reading in search of a hidden script. In fact, the riddle is an instance of what Attardo and Raskin (1991), in their General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH), explain as a single script that contains two opposing yet perfectly overlapping scripts – one script involving cat nutrition and another script about a horrible cocktail. Both orally and graphically, the deceit is equally palpable because the two versions are flagrantly manipulating a verbal phrase by transforming it into a noun phrase. English does not make use of many diacritics, so the joke is likewise deceptive in its written version. According to Joel Sherzer, what has occurred in such a riddle is an “axial” clash. In order to be interpreted correctly “cat drink” needs to be understood as a single item, a compound noun, therefore according to the version of utterance Q that we wish to accept, the two items, in becoming a single item, will occupy different slots along the syntagmatic axis. If, intentionally or otherwise, as in the “cat drink” example, the wrong filler occupies the wrong slot along the language axes, the paradigmatic axis invades the syntagmatic leading Sherzer to define such wordplay as “a projection of the paradigmatic onto the syntagmatic . . . precisely the Jakobsonian definition of poetry” (1978: 341). We have thus come full circle and we return to Hockett’s notion of layperson’s poetry. Your Wit Is My Command is the title of a book by Tony Veale. From the title, knowing that the correct expression is “your wish is my command,” one is likely to deduce that the title contains a typo. One might even think that the book might be about a witty genie because the “correct” or more natural phrase is commonly attributed to Aladdin’s genie who utters it each time he is summoned from a magic lamp to grant wishes. The book in question is actually about humor and artificial intelligence, and its title makes use of allusive or distant homophony known as alliteratio a trope that exploits the beginning or the end of two words that sound the same – wit /wɪt/ and wish / wɪʃ/ begin with the same /wɪ / sound. The book’s subtitle, Building Ais with a Sense of Humor, makes contextual sense of the replacement of a /ʃ/ with a /t/ to turn the word wish into the term wit and place it within the setting of the term command, in the sense of a directive to a computer program that will make it perform a specific task. The subtitle leads us away from the genie script and toward the intended computer script. However, there is no escaping the feeling that the title contains an intentional “mistake.” In fact, much humor is created unintentionally, and when it does, just like in cases of deliberate VEH, context is key because the mistake will clash with the situation at hand and amuse those who come across it.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.017 Published online by Cambridge University Press

357

358

DELIA CHIARO

16.3 Unintentional Verbally Expressed Humor Freudian slips (or parapraxis) cause laughter because they accidentally occur where and when they should not, namely in the wrong context. One of the sources Freud used to talk about the language of the psyche was jokes. The other, of course, was dreams. Freud sees these two sources of data as tapping unconscious desires. From his patients’ verbal blunders, Freud developed his well-known personality theory that he related to their feelings of shame and primal desires, the point being that these slips of the tongue revealed new contexts that made sense. In other words, although we may laugh at the person who has made the verbal blunder for a number of reasons, the verbal faux pas usually creates perfect cohesion, albeit in the wrong context, which is precisely why it is amusing. What results from the mistake is cohesive and at the same time, ironic. Therefore, yes, the perpetrator has misplaced a sound, a word, or a phrase, but it is the accurate coherence in the wrong context that causes the humor. We laugh at people’s accidental mistakes all the time, so much so that many people pretend to make verbal blunders to show that they are clever and funny. Following an article on politicians’ slips of the tongue that appeared in the Guardian newspaper (Parkinson 2021), a reader added an example of a similar mistake: At my wedding a very long time ago, a friend made us a generous present of a kitchen appliance that he nervously described to the assembled guests as a perky copulator.

A wedding guest who presents a “perky copulator” (instead of a coffee percolator), the word copulator is technically a homeoteleuton, a word/words in which the substitution of one or two syllables occurs, tells an especially good and funny story precisely because of the context in which it was narrated. A wedding is traditionally followed by a honeymoon during which the newly-weds are expected to engage in plentiful sexual activity. A guest who makes a wedding speech in which they talk about having given the couple a percolator that accidentally (or otherwise, the story might be an urban legend) becomes a “copulator” is, under the circumstances, semantically appropriate yet, at the same time, funny because sex is one of those taboos people laugh about. The addition of the adjective perky, which has the meaning ‘frisky’ and ‘saucy’ among others, adds to the comic effect. Such accidental, or accidentally on purpose instances of wordplay are precisely those upon which “original” jokes, quips, funny remarks and the like are shaped. A Freudian slip is saying one thing when you mean your mother.

This one-liner that plays on the likeness between “your mother” and “another” – it is formally a combination of alliteratio and homeoteleuton – also exemplifies how the deliberate manipulation of language can closely

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.017 Published online by Cambridge University Press

16 Linguistic Creativity and Humor in Context

resemble a fortuitous slip of the tongue. We can imagine the person uttering the quip in a deadpan manner and seemingly above comic suspicion, as though they truly did not purposefully deliver the line with humorous intent. Nevertheless, we suspect that the remark was intentional because contextually the notion of mothers primes so well with Freud’s work and his well-known Oedipus complex metaphor. Yet the one-liner resembles a slip of the tongue. Once more context is key, misplacing “another” with “your mother,” a word that sounds the same, has the same number of syllables, and also happens to rhyme, lodges well with Freud’s theory. Verbal blunders such as spoonerisms (or distant metathesis), malapropisms, and misplaced words are all accidental instances of VEH that are a source of enjoyment and that are often reported to others in order to amuse. We laugh at the person who makes the verbal faux pas and with the person who tells us about it. Homophones, homonyms, and homographs can also lead to misunderstanding and amusement when their ambiguity leads them away from the context at hand. Sherzer (1978) reports a poet ending her lecture by saying “There are some things that only happen to a woman. Period.” The American poet used the term period in the sense of “end of story” in order to emphasize what she had said in her lecture, namely that there was nothing more to add on the matter. Nevertheless, if we consider other possible senses of period, among which we find “menstruation,” we see how the poet’s choice of word was unfortunate because she adopts a homonym that also happens to denote some thing that only happens to women, that is, menstruation. So in order to determine what speakers mean (as opposed to what their words mean), listeners and readers need to assign sense to the words they hear and see. As we have seen, a very straightforward process such as assigning sense to words can cause problems if homonyms such as period, which can mean both ‘full stop’/’menstruation,’ are involved. An American package of a make of contraceptive pill containing two months’ supply is labeled “Twin Pack” (The Telegraph n.d.). Whoever was responsible for the wording on the packaging in question was linguistically careless. It is unlikely that they purposely went for the expression “Twin Pack” to cause hilarity, yet a joke has occurred precisely because of the use of the term twin to signal a package containing two cartons of the contraceptive pill whose aim it is to avoid pregnancy. Twin, which suggests a multiple birth, is an inappropriate choice of lexis within the context of contraception, which is precisely why it is a source of amusement. In addition, this mistake, which results in cohesive irony, was reported in a newspaper column and is a retelling in the writer’s own words of the incongruity they had spotted. The writer’s intention is that readers will laugh with them, and at the pharmaceutical company that made the verbal blunder.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.017 Published online by Cambridge University Press

359

360

DELIA CHIARO

16.4 The Treachery of Language Intentional VEH often mirrors slips of the tongue. In Blame It on the Bellboy, a filmic comedy set in Venice directed by Mark Herman (1992), Maurice Horton, an elderly, overweight, and unattractive Englishman, has been misled to believe that he is on a date with the young and beautiful Caroline Wright. In effect, Wright is not on a date with Horton; she is an estate agent who thinks that she is about to sell him a villa overlooking the Lagoon. Even without considering the dialogues, the plot contains all the necessary elements for a farce; however, linguistic ambiguity adds to the comic confusion. As Wright shows her client around the house saying, “Would you prefer to start inside?” “Shall we go upstairs,” and “Do you like what you see?” her utterances take on two different meanings. Wright thinks her client is there for a viewing of the villa that he intends to purchase, but Horton, who thinks he is in the company of an escort, makes very different contextual sense of what she is saying: Wright: Don’t you think we ought to get down to the nitty gritty? Horton: I’m sorry! We’ve only just met, I don’t want you to think I’m an old fuddy-duddy or anything, it’s just that . . . don’t you think it’s a bit early in the day for that sort of talk? Wright: Well, I suppose so . . . Horton; Well, I suppose you young people do things differently nowadays. I didn’t mean to rush you, but that’s what we’re here for isn’t it? Wright: Yes, yes, absolutely! The two characters are speaking within two distinct and unconnected contexts. For Wright, who is trying to sell a house, getting down to the “nitty gritty” means making decisions such as bargaining on the price, finalizing the sale, and nothing more. On the other hand, Horton is looking for a sexual encounter, and so for him, that same phrase is an invitation to just that. The ambiguity of “nitty gritty” generates a dialogue in which the two speakers interact at cross-purposes because each interlocutor is speaking within opposing contexts. Interpreting Wright’s utterance as a solicitation to engage in sex, at first Horton acts shocked and embarrassed about “That sort of talk” but soon doubles back with “but that’s what we’re here for isn’t it?” For Wright, the deictic “that” refers to negotiating about the sale of the villa, but Horton understands that same “that” to mean sexual intercourse. The fact that the two are thinking in two very diverse contexts triggers amusement, and the inclusion of sex gives the humor extra vivacity. In a later scene, over a meal in which Wright is convinced that she has sold the villa, the farcical, cross-purpose conversation continues: Wright: Some people do it over the phone. Horton: Sounds as if you’re not new at this game. Wright: No, I’ve been doing it for years.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.017 Published online by Cambridge University Press

16 Linguistic Creativity and Humor in Context

Wright is still uniquely talking about the sale of the house, stating that negotiations can take place over the phone. However, Horton, who is still fixated on the idea of engaging in sex with Wright, has no idea that she is trying to sell him a house and misunderstands the idiom “doing it.” In British English, “it” is a euphemism, in which do acts as a pro-form standing in for an activity that combined with the pronoun it takes on the meaning of ‘engaging in sexual intercourse.’ Fresh from the earlier conversation about the “nitty gritty,” Horton takes Wright’s utterance out of her intended context and into his own. In addition, Horton is especially content to see that she is not a novice at this “game,” a word which according to the context in which Wright is operating means working in real estate, but Horton understands that she has been on the game “for years,” in other words that she is someone experienced in having sex for money. These instances of incorrect assignment of sense are down to homonymy, words and expressions that have different meanings, but the same problem can also occur because of homophony, two words or expressions that sound the same. Thomas (1995: 25) provides an example from the minutes of a management meeting at the BBC: The solicitor reported that the BBC was being sued in Ireland by a man who thought he had been described as having herpes. The BBC’s defence was that it had accused him of having a hairpiece.

The issue arose because the newsreader in question spoke in a Northern Irish accent in which the term herpes is pronounced in the same way as the word hairpiece, i.e., /ˈhɜː(r)piːz/. The exact same ambiguity is exploited, this time deliberately, in the script of the film An Everlasting Peace (directed by Barry Levinson, 2000) about two men, a Catholic and a Protestant, selling wigs (hairpieces) during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The title of the film itself intentionally plays on the homophony of the word peace that, during the 1970s and 1980s when the film was set, was a much sought after condition in Northern Ireland, and, as it is also a homophone of piece we therefore have an appropriate title for a film revolving around the IRA and wigs. The term is contextualized twice over in terms of its “war/wig” scripts. The likeness of the terms hairpiece/herpes, uttered in a Northern Irish accent, generated a dialogue in the film in which a customer allocates the wrong sense to the term and takes offense at the implication that he might have herpes: Mr. Black: [angry] Look, I told you: I don’t know who you’ve been talking to but he’s a fucking liar! You’ll find no herpes here! Colm: [surprised] Herpes? Mr. Black: That’s what you said. George: No sir. [points to his head] Hair pieces. Mr. Black: Oh. I thought you said “herpes.”

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.017 Published online by Cambridge University Press

361

362

DELIA CHIARO

Ambiguity does not stop short at lexis, structural uncertainty can also be the source of humor: Oozing across the floor, Marvin watched the salad dressing.

The hearer has to decide whether it is Marvin or the salad dressing that is flowing, and although common sense points to the latter, the speaker has omitted the subject of the opening clause, creating doubt. Basic world knowledge leads the hearer to understand that it is unlikely that Marvin is “oozing” therefore leading to a humorous effect. Similarly, the traditional church hall notice “Ladies, please rinse out your teapots and stand upside down in sink” plays on the same ambiguity of the dangling participle caused by a missing subject and object in the second imperative (see Chiaro 1992: 42). Like these slips of the tongue, deliberate VEH often has an accidental-but-on-purpose feel about it. This is because the same linguistic mechanisms involved in unintended verbal gaffes are adopted in the intentional creation of VEH. Uncooperative conversational behavior represents another significant base for VEH. A panhandler who asks a passerby for a cigarette with, “Have you got a cigarette?” does not receive the cigarette they had asked for, but instead, the person they had asked just answers “Yes” and walks away. Likewise, a passerby could ask another “Have you got the time?” to which the respondent does not inform them of the time of day but just says “Yes” and walks off. In both situations the passerby’s uncooperative behavior flouts Grice’s maxim of relevance, and is indulging in what Mizzau (1991) has labeled sciopero bianco delle parole or ‘words working to rule’ (my translation). Words go on strike and work to rule when a respondent reacts to the literal sense of an utterance directed at them and not to the intention or the force of the speech act. Strictly speaking, the speaker simply makes the minimum effort to understand the speech act behind the utterance and takes it at face value. By doing this, the speaker contravenes the basic conversational principle of cooperation. In these examples, the requests for an object, a cigarette, or for the time of day are deliberately interpreted respectively as appeals to find out whether the respondent is carrying a cigarette and knows the time, and not whether they are willing to offer the ciggie or tell them the time. In terms of humor, the respondent is punching down at the person making the request. The kind of humor conveyed to audiences by Sheldon, a character in the sitcom The Big Bang Theory, works on this type of uncooperative conversational style. Sheldon is a very intelligent nuclear physicist who repeatedly makes words work to rule and accordingly obtains a comic effect. In a scene that takes place at a diner, a friend, directing his gaze at a bottle of ketchup close to Sheldon, politely asks, “Sheldon is that ketchup on that table?” Instead of responding to his friend’s request by fetching the ketchup, Sheldon answers, “Yes it is,” and launches into a lengthy and complex tirade about the ingredients of the sauce. When Sheldon has finished speaking, his friend gets up and says “I’ll get it,” causing further comedy. This kind of non-cooperation does not rely solely on the recipient of an utterance but can also be triggered by the

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.017 Published online by Cambridge University Press

16 Linguistic Creativity and Humor in Context

initiator of an exchange. Catch riddles such as the notorious “Why did the chicken cross the road?” trick the recipient into thinking they are being asked to solve a conundrum and that a far-fetched and ingenious answer is expected of them (see seminal work on riddles by folklorists Opie and Opie 1959: 73–86). Instead, the answer is not a complex play on words but a straightforward truth, in the case of the peripatetic chicken, the traditional response is “to get to the other side.” Constantinople is a very long word. How do you spell it? Where did King John sign the Magna Carta? At the bottom.

These examples of deliberate playground humor work in exactly the same way as the riddle about the rambling chicken. The riddler, who provides both question and answer, is being uncooperative by providing solutions that are both evident and uninformative. The notorious “Constantinople” riddle is a verbal ambush that has been delighting children for decades, the answer is, of course “it.” However, regarding the riddle about the Magna Carta, if a teacher were to ask a class that same question, a child who answers “at the bottom” would be judged as having given an inappropriate answer that is likely to be taken as sarcasm, especially if uttered by the class clown. This is because the teacher is not operating within a play frame and is not riddling but testing the class. A timely example of this kind of behavior is a schoolchild’s answer in a gap-filling exercise to the question “Who killed Goliath?” The answer sheet provides a blank space preceding the letters VID (i.e. “. . . VID”), to which one member of the class inserted the letters “CO” to create the word covid. Whether the child was deliberately trying to be funny we do not know, but the teacher took the response as sarcasm, as is clear from her response “See me after class” at the bottom of the page.

16.5 Encyclopedic Knowledge Whether creating or receiving an instance of VEH, not only is it essential that interactants share the language in which it is delivered, but awareness of a number of circumstantial features is also indispensable. An important contextual wall that VEH hits is that of encyclopedic knowledge, a concept that in itself is extremely complex because it does not stop short at the sentience of a standard set of facts that vaguely go by the name of culture. The kind of knowledge required to get humor clearly stretches way beyond knowing the answers to a standard pub quiz, as it often includes information shared only by a restricted group of people, and here we see the concept of proximity/ distance raising its head. So far, in most of the examples we have examined the ambiguity that triggered the VEH hinged on basic world knowledge, with the exception of the one-liner about the Freudian slip that a person unfamiliar with the psychoanalyst’s work would not get.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.017 Published online by Cambridge University Press

363

364

DELIA CHIARO

I shall begin by stating the obvious, namely that in order for VEH to work, the language in which a witty quip, remark, or even full-blown joke is couched has to be shared by the interactants. VEH is created through the exploitation of linguistic features present in a given language in order to create the opposition and overlap first proposed in Raskin’s Semantic Script Theory (1984) and later expanded by Attardo and Raskin in the GTVH (1991). Attardo and Raskin argue that a humorous script must essentially consist of two overlapping scripts, one of which is obvious but that simultaneously shields another, less noticeable, script that is not immediately apparent. These two scripts must be in opposition to each other in order for humor to result. Why did the window box? Because it saw the garden fence.

To native speakers of English, this classic children’s riddle is evident. The opposing “gardening” script (window box and garden fence) versus the “sport” script (boxing and fencing) overlap to perfection rendering the riddle both ambiguous in its contrasts but at the same time unique in its words’ ability to conceal the two meanings. In translation the riddle just does not work – unless, of course, we find a language in which the words for both box and fence contain the same homonymic sense as English. However, let us move on to instances of VEH where all interactants speak the same language. According to the Roman orator Cicero, who among other things was notorious for his verbal wit, “a witty saying has its point sometimes in facts, sometimes in words, though people are most particularly amused whenever laughter is excited by the union of the two” (II, LXI, 248) (1965: 383). Specifically, according to Cicero, the best witty remarks, jokes, etc. combine language and world knowledge. Over and above proficiency in English, only those familiar with the Plastic Ono Band will appreciate that a vegetarian is someone who gives peas a chance and a minimum knowledge of English and French history is required to realize that Richard Coeur de Lion was the first heart transplant. For such VEH to travel successfully from initiator to recipient, two types of expertise are indispensable, linguistic expertise and encyclopedic or sociocultural knowledge, because, as emerges from the examples, these two competences may intersect. Expressly, you cannot do much if you just have awareness of one and not the other. These remarks exploit the options of English and general knowledge, too, and so far so good. However, as mentioned earlier, sociocultural knowledge is not as straightforward as one might think. Things get more complicated when knowledge becomes more specialized. Like everything else in life, humor changes in time. Rather, humor based upon situations that were once timely are unlikely to be funny today, simply because the relevant context is lost. In the 1950s, folklorists Opie and Opie (1959: 106) report the following playground joke: Do you know a teddy boy’s just been drowned – in his drainpipe trousers?

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.017 Published online by Cambridge University Press

16 Linguistic Creativity and Humor in Context

It is questionable that schoolchildren today will be familiar with teddy boys, a British youth subculture of the 1950s, and the type of high-waisted “drainpipe” trousers they wore. We need not go back so far in time to find that jokes and witty remarks soon go stale owing to their invisible sell-by date that anchors them to a particular moment in time. The scandal involving Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky in the 1990s spawned countless jokes, and it is implausible that the average millennial will see two opposing and overlapping scripts in the claim that what Clinton found attractive in Lewinsky was “the prettiest smile he had ever come across” – but a Boomer is liable to see both. Whether anyone finds the quip funny or not is another matter and involves sense of humor and issues connected to good and bad taste that are beyond the scope of this chapter. Apart from temporal context, most individuals’ encyclopedias are bound to be limited to their world and to their interests – we do not live in a world of polymaths. I had no idea that engineers confuse Halloween and Christmas because Oct. 31 = Dec. 25. According to two numerical systems known as Octal (which can be abbreviated to Oct.) and Decimal (or Dec.), Octal 31 is equal to Decimal 25. At this point linguistic knowledge enters the equation (pun intended) as both look like month abbreviations and therefore we have a joke whose understanding is limited only to those familiar with the two numerical bases. I could go on providing data of VEH that is restricted to people with extremely specialized knowledge of specific topics, which could require knowing about practically anything from medicine to football, but I think that I have made my point: overlap and oppositeness involve language and world knowledge. Owing to its inherent linguacultural ambiguity, VEH is by default cryptic. As we have seen, it is about playful deceit, and sometimes, as in the case of sarcasm, somewhat cruel deception. Our immediate response to the query “What comes steaming out of cows backwards?” would be dung, although the right answer would be the Isle of Wight ferry – Cowes, a homophone of cows, is the island’s main seaport. Contexts shift. Both dung and ferries may steam, but in order to solicit laughter or a smile the contexts must seamlessly overlap. For the creator of VEH, linguistic competence and encyclopedic competence are, however, not enough. The creator also needs comic competence to be able to spot linguacultural duplicity and partake in Sontag’s notion of “partial knowing” (2004). According to Sontag “the theory of knowing that is relevant to the comic is essentially a theory of non-knowing, or pretending not to know, or partial knowing” –the creator of VEH must pretend not to know, they must pretend to be slipping up.

16.6 In and Out of the Play Frame Having examined the significance of linguistic and sociocultural context in VEH, I shall now look at situational context. Where and when it is acceptable to joke and engage in banter varies across cultures. Although I have no hard

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108989275.017 Published online by Cambridge University Press

365

366

DELIA CHIARO

data to back this up, VEH is extremely pervasive among native speakers of English, or to quote anthropologist Kate Fox “The important ‘rule’ about English humour is its dominance and pervasiveness. Humour rules. Humour governs. Humour is omnipresent and omnipotent” (2017: 61). While in many cultures there is a special time and place for humor, for the English there appears to be a permanent and ubiquitous undercurrent in all spoken interactions. Even phatic communion about the weather might include the ironic “Nice weather for ducks” if it happens to be a rainy day, while a response to “How are you?” could well be “How long have you got?” if the speaker does not want to provide the standard cooperative reply “Fine thanks.” The Eng