Journal ArticleDOI
Indirect Speech Acts
Nicholas Asher,Alex Lascarides +1 more
TLDR
It is shown how a formal semantictheory of discourse interpretation can be used to define speech acts and to avoid murky issues concerning the metaphysics of action.Abstract:
In this paper, we address several puzzles concerning speech acts,particularly indirect speech acts. We show how a formal semantictheory of discourse interpretation can be used to define speech actsand to avoid murky issues concerning the metaphysics of action. Weprovide a formally precise definition of indirect speech acts, includingthe subclass of so-called conventionalized indirect speech acts. Thisanalysis draws heavily on parallels between phenomena at the speechact level and the lexical level. First, we argue that, just as co-predicationshows that some words can behave linguistically as if they're `simultaneously'of incompatible semantic types, certain speech acts behave this way too.Secondly, as Horn and Bayer (1984) and others have suggested, both thelexicon and speech acts are subject to a principle of blocking or ``preemptionby synonymy'': Conventionalized indirect speech acts can block their`paraphrases' from being interpreted as indirect speech acts, even ifthis interpretation is calculable from Gricean-style principles. Weprovide a formal model of this blocking, and compare it withexisting accounts of lexical blocking.read more
Citations
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Negative Bias in Polar Questions
Nicholas Asher,Brian Reese +1 more
TL;DR: This paper investigated the discourse function of negative bias in questions and developed an analysis of biased questions as complex speech acts, i.e., illocutionary acts comprised of both an assertion and a question.
Journal ArticleDOI
WAR in the Media: Metaphors, Ideology, and the Formation of Language Policy.
TL;DR: The authors used metaphor analysis to uncover the rhetorical strategies applied in the media by the English for the Children campaign to position Proposition 203 in a favorable light, focusing on the multivalent metaphor PROSITION 203 AS WAR to expose the underlying ideology of Proposition 203.
Journal ArticleDOI
A Dual Aspect Account of Moral Language
TL;DR: The Dual Aspect Account (DA) as mentioned in this paper is a cognitivist approach to the duality between moral language and attitudes, and it is compatible with any relevant cognitivism view.
Dissertation
The role of pragmatics instruction in language learning in the context of English as a Foreign Language
El Shazly,Reham Farouk +1 more
Journal ArticleDOI
Polite speech emerges from competing social goals
TL;DR: It is shown that polite speech emerges from the competition of three communicative goals: to convey information, to be kind, and to present oneself in a good light, and a probabilistic model of utterance production is used, which predicts human utterance choices in socially sensitive situations with high quantitative accuracy.
References
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Book
How to do things with words
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors presented a series of lectures with the following topics: Lecture I * Lecture II* Lecture III * Lectures IV* Lectures V * LectURE VI * LectURES VI * LII * LIII * LIV * LVI * LIX
Book ChapterDOI
Logic and Conversation
TL;DR: For instance, Grice was interested in Quine's logical approach to language, although he differed from Quine over certain specific specific questions, such as the viability of the distinction between analytic and synthetic statements.
Book
Head-driven phrase structure grammar
Ivan A. Sag,Carl Jesse Pollard +1 more
TL;DR: This book presents the most complete exposition of the theory of head-driven phrase structure grammar, introduced in the authors' "Information-Based Syntax and Semantics," and demonstrates the applicability of the HPSG approach to a wide range of empirical problems.