The Cambridge Handbook of Pragmatics: Saying, meaning, and implicating

Following the development of a framework for critical stylistics (Jeffries 2010) and the explication of some of the theoretical assumptions behind this framework (Jeffries 2014a, 2014b, 2015a, 2015b), the present article attempts to put this framework into a larger theoretical context as a way to approach textual meaning. Using examples from the popular U.S. television show, The Big Bang Theory, I examine the evidence that there is a kind of textual meaning which can be distinguished from the core propositional meaning on the one hand and from contextual, interpersonal meaning on the other. The specific aim, to demonstrate a layer of meaning belonging to text specifically, is set within an argument which claims that progress in linguistics can better be served by adherence to a rigorous scientific discipline.

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Textual meaning and its place in a theory of language

I suspect the answer to the question in the title of this paper is no. But the scope of my paper will be considerably more limited: I will be concerned with whether certain types of considerations that are commonly cited in favor of dynamic semantics do in fact push us towards a dynamic semantics. Ultimately, I will argue that the evidence points to a dynamics of discourse that is best treated pragmatically, rather than as part of the semantics. There is no doubt a lot to be learned from the work being done in dynamic semantics. My worry is that the move to a dynamic semantic framework is often insufficiently motivated, that the argument for dynamic semantics too often involves a quick move from the observation of dynamic phenomena in discourse to the conclusion that we need dynamic semantics. I think that traditional semantic and pragmatic theories have the resources to explain the same phenomena in similar ways. Furthermore, I think the latter are the right explanations.

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Do we need dynamic semantics

As science focuses exclusively on the physical, it seems to assume that the brain has a key role in the origin if not also the constitution of our consciousness; and thus the destruction of the brain, the nervous system, and the body makes it pointless or even absurd to think of any personal consciousness after death. But one need not be convinced by this. However, any effort to investigate a possible post-mortem life depends on forming a coherent conception of what such a life could be. Can we speak, without incoherence or contradiction, of a person continuing to exist after death in a disembodied state? Our concern in this study lies here. Based on Lund's view, we will present and defend an argument that one can conceive of a self who is fully embedded in the natural world and deeply embodied in a physical organism, and yet could have a rich variety of experiences in an afterworld encountered after death. In this theory, the close association of the mental and the physical is due to a causal connection - a connection that fails to establish that the physical brings the mental into existence and is compatible with theories that the source of consciousness is not in the brain (e.g., the transceiver or filter theory).

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The Coceivability of a Disembodied Personal Life Beyond Death Based on David Lund’s Views

Saul (2002) criticizes a view on the relationship between speaker meaning and conversational implicatures according to which speaker meaning is exhaustively comprised of what is said and what is implicated. In the course of making her points, she develops a couple of new notions which she calls “utterer-implicature” and “audience-implicature”. She then makes certain claims about the relationship between the intersection of those two notions and successful communication and also about the difference between conversational implicature and the intersection of utterer and audience implicatures. Finally, she tries to figure out the role and importance of conversational implicature in communication. Her claim on this issue is that conversational implicature plays a normative role in communication. In this paper, I will introduce her views on the above issues and critically engage some of them. I will show that her identification of successful communication with the intersection of utterer and audience implicatures is wrong. I will then show that her views on the difference between conversational implicature and the intersection of utterer and audience implicature run to several problems. Finally, appealing to what she says in Saul (2010) I try to make her claim about the normative character of conversational implicature more accurate.

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Reflections on Jennifer Saul's View of Successful Communication and Conversational Implicature

Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction: Paul Grice, Philosopher of Language, But More Than That K.Petrus Paul Grice and the Philosophy of Ordinary Language S.Chapman Intuition, the Paradigm Case Argument, and the Two Dogmas of Kant'otelianism: Grice's Defense of the Analytic/Synthetic Distinction and Kripke's Defense of Essentialism J.D.Atlas Grice on Presupposition A.Bezuidenhout Irregular Negations: Implicature and Idion Theories W.A.Davis A Gricean View on Intrusive Implicature M.Simons Speaker Meaning, Conversational Implicature, and Calculability J.Saul Some Aspects of Reasons and Rationality J.Baker Showing and Meaning: On How We Make Our Ideas Clear M.Green Illocution, Perillocution and Communication K.Petrus Speaker Meaning and the Logic of Communicative Acts C.Plunze The Total Content of What a Speaker Means A.Martinich On Three Theories of Implicature: Default Theory, Relevance Theory and Minimalism E.Borg Contextualism in the Philosophy of Language N.Kompa WJ-40: Issues in the Investigation of Implicature L.R.Horn Index

Mitchell Green

Papers

Meaning and analysis : new essays on Grice