University of Birmingham
Embedding Irony, and the Semantics/Pragmatics
Distinction
Popa-Wyatt, Mihaela
DOI:
10.1080/0020174X.2018.1446048
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Peer reviewed version
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Popa-Wyatt, M 2018, 'Embedding Irony, and the Semantics/Pragmatics Distinction', Inquiry.
https://doi.org/10.1080/0020174X.2018.1446048
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EMBEDDING IRONY
Embedding Irony
and the Semantics/Pragmatics Distinction
This paper argues that we need to re-think the semantics/pragmatics distinction in the light of new
evidence from embedding of irony. This raises a new version of the old problem of ‘embedded implicatures’.
I argue that embedded irony isn’t fully explained by solutions proposed for other embedded implicatures.
I first consider two strategies: weak pragmatics and strong pragmatics. These explain embedded irony as truth-
conditional content. However, by trying to shoehorn irony into said-content, they raise problems of their
own. I conclude by considering how a modified Gricean model can explain that irony embeds qua
implicature. This leads us to prefer a local implicature model.
Keywords: embedded irony, embedding, truth-conditional compositionality, embedded implicatures,
local implicatures, semantics/pragmatics distinction.!
!2
EMBEDDING IRONY
Embedding Irony
and the Semantics/Pragmatics Distinction
This paper argues that we need to re-think the semantics/pragmatics distinction in the light of new
evidence from embedding of irony. This raises a new version of the old problem of ‘embedded implicatures’.
I argue that embedded irony isn’t fully explained by solutions proposed for other embedded implicatures.
I first consider two strategies: weak pragmatics and strong pragmatics. These explain embedded irony as truth-
conditional content. However, by trying to shoehorn irony into said-content, they raise problems of their
own. I conclude by considering how a modified Gricean model can explain that irony embeds qua
implicature. This leads us to prefer a local implicature model.
1" The Semantics/Pragmatics Distinction
Where does semantics end and pragmatics begin? The traditional answer has been that pragmatics
starts where semantics finishes. To a first approximation, this division of labour reflects Grice’s
(1989) division of speaker-meaning into two parts: what is said and what is implicated. Saying comes
before implicating, and functions as a central part of the supporting evidence for working out what
else, or what more, the speaker may have implicated in uttering a sentence S. Most of the debates
on the semantics/pragmatics distinction have predominantly focused on the epistemological
question of how meaning is derived—how it is that hearers try to work out what it is that the
speaker meant. This is concerned with what kind of information and processes hearers use as
1
evidence to form a hypothesis about what the speaker has said and/or implicated in uttering S.
Accordingly, said-content is determined compositionally—by composing the semantic meanings or
contents of individual words (relative to context), together with their mode of composition via the
syntactic structure of the sentence. Implicated-content is inferred contextually by reasoning about why
the speaker has said what she said in a given context. These two ways of extracting meaning do not
mix: saying is bottom-up driven by rules of grammar; implicating is top-down driven by common-
sense reasoning.
Grice distinguishes the epistemological question from the metaphysical question of meaning determination. The
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metaphysical determination concerns how meaning supervenes on the speaker’s communicative intentions. In other words,
meaning comes from the mental states of the speaker and these mental states involve higher-order type intentions to get
something across while being perceived by the hearer as trying to get something across. The epistemological determination
is concerned with how hearers recognise the speaker’s communicative intention and work out what it is that they are trying
to communicate. Though the metaphysical and epistemological questions are separate, they constrain one another. Speakers
want (and expect) to be understood, and hearers seek (and expect) to understand. So, in forming communicative intentions
the speaker relies on the hearer’s ability to grasp those intentions. Vice-versa, in interpreting an utterance, the hearer relies
in turn on the speaker’s capacity to exploit this ability. For details about the methodological flaws that may arise from
conflating this distinction, see Bach (2005a), Neale (2005), among others.
!3
EMBEDDING IRONY
This way of motivating the semantics/pragmatics distinction has been fraught with heated
disputes because it doesn’t perfectly align with the said/implicated distinction. This is because we
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often leave things un-said in what we say. So some pragmatics is needed to determine what was said,
either to fill in what is missing, or fill out what is not contextually specific. This much is undisputed.
What is disputed is how much contextual supplementation is needed, and what kind of pragmatic
processes should be allowed to provide it. Some propose weak pragmatics; others strong pragmatics.
Proponents of weak pragmatics require that the pragmatic supplementation be constrained by
semantic rules (e.g. saturation of indexicals, demonstratives, and other context-sensitive expressions,
disambiguation). This results in ‘weak’ pragmatic effects which feed directly into compositionality—
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thus retaining a strong and robust semantic compositionality. Proponents of strong pragmatics are more
liberal, allowing linguistically unconstrained pragmatic processes to intrude into what is said. This
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sometimes serves to fill the gap between sentence meaning and what we say, and other times it may
require recruiting certain types of implicatures in order to fill in the gap between what we say and
what we mean, when what we mean goes well beyond what the words themselves mean. This
requires a ‘free’ pragmatic inference—‘free’ in the sense of a top-down reasoning unconstrained by
linguistic rules. This reasoning is similar to calculating implicatures, except that it applies locally to
individual words and phrases. This results in ‘strong’ pragmatic effects which feed directly into
compositionality—though this calls for a weaker compositionality known as pragmatic compositionality.
Despite the differences in details, both camps are equally motivated by a desire to preserve
compositionality—more specifically, truth-conditional compositionality which holds that both inputs and
outputs of compositional processes are truth-conditional contents. One way to secure this is to ban
implicatures from intruding into compositionality. This thesis has taken various guises —here I shall
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call it truth-conditional embedding (henceforth TC-Embedding):
TC-Embedding:" If S is embedded in a compound sentence, like conditionals, disjunctions,
" " belief-reports, etc., then what S contributes to the compound cannot be an !
!!implicature, but only a truth-conditional content.
TC-Embedding is associated with a commonly held assumption that logical operators work truth-
functionally, by mapping S’s truth-conditions onto the truth-conditions of the whole compound.
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This means that S embedded under an operator is only performed in a propositional act—an act of
uttering a sentence with a propositional (true/false assessable) content such that the utterance can
I’ll use the said/implicated distinction as a proxy for the semantics/pragmatics distinction, though an imperfect one. As
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we’ll see, pragmatics intrudes into semantics in order to fill the gap between the sentence meaning and what the speaker
means to say. Nevertheless, the kind of pragmatics that contrasts sharply with semantics concerns paradigmatic
conversational implicatures. For simplicity, I leave aside controversial questions of whether conventional implicatures exist
(for a denial, see Bach 1994), or whether conversational implicatures exist (for a denial, see Gauker 2001, Lepore & Stone
2014), or whether or not we can have a semantics for a language (for a denial, see Travis 2000; Pietroski forth).
Stanley (2000), Stanley & Szabó (2000), King & Stanley (2005), Cappelan & Lepore (2005), Borg (2004), among others.
3
Recanati (2004), Carston (2002), Bezuidenhout (2002), among others.
4
This thesis usually goes by the name of Scope Principle, cf. Recanati (1989); see also Wilson (1975), Carston (1991), Green
5
(1998), O’Rourke (2003), Camp (2012).
For Grice, the semantics of connectives is given entirely by their standard truth-functional interpretation, which is non-
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cancellable content.
!4