Thoughts and Utterances: The Pragmatics of Explicit Communication - Hardcover

Carston, Robyn

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0631178910 ISBN 13: 9780631178910

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell, 2002

Synopsis

Thoughts and Utterances is the first sustained investigation of two distinctions which are fundamental to all theories of utterance understanding: the semantics/pragmatics distinction and the distinction between what is explicitly communicated and what is implicitly communicated.

• Features the first sustained investigation of both the semantics/pragmatics distinction and the distinction between what is explicitly and implicitly communicated in speech.

About this title

About the Author

Robyn Carston is Reader in Linguistics at University College London. She is co-editor of Relevance Theory: Applications and Implications (1998).

From the Back Cover

Thoughts and Utterances is the first sustained investigation of two distinctions that are fundamental to all theories of utterance understanding: the semantics/pragmatics distinction and the distinction between what is explicitly and what is implicitly communicated.

The central claim of this book is that the linguistically encoded meaning of an utterance underdetermines the propositions explicitly communicated by the utterance. The arguments and analyses are developed within the relevance-theoretic framework of Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson, so the approach is resolutely cognitive, focussing on the representational levels and mental processes involved in utterance interpretation. However, extensive comparison is made throughout with other pragmatic frameworks, including those of Paul Grice, François Recanati and Kent Bach, which are more philosophically based, and that of Stephen Levinson, which has a more linguistic and computational orientation.

Finally, this volume assesses and attempts to reconcile the different perspectives of theories of human semantic competence and accounts of the pragmatic processes involved in communication and interpretation.

The central claim of this book is that the linguistically encoded meaning of an utterance underdetermines the propositions explicitly communicated by the utterance. The arguments and analyses are developed within the relevance-theoretic framework of Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson, so the approach is resolutely cognitive, focussing on the representational levels and mental processes involved in utterance interpretation. However, extensive comparison is made throughout with other pragmatic frameworks, including those of Paul Grice, François Recanati and Kent Bach, which are more philosophically based, and that of Stephen Levinson, which has a more linguistic and computational orientation.

Finally, this volume assesses and attempts to reconcile the different perspectives of theories of human semantic competence and accounts of the pragmatic processes involved in communication and interpretation.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0631178910
• ISBN 13: 9780631178910
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 432