For a constitutive pragmatics

Obama, Médecins Sans Frontières and the measuring stick

Datos Bibliográficos

ID21200968
AutoresFrançois Cooren (0000-0001-8954-4511, Université de Montréal), Frederik Matte
Año2010
Volumen1
Número1
Páginas9-31
Fecha de publicación2010-08-27
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaPragmatics and Society (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1878-9714 • E-ISSN: 1878-9722
EditorialJohn Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1075/ps.1.1.02coo
OpenAlexW2088122784
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas13

This paper proposes to explore the mechanisms by which speaking, writing and, more generally, interacting pragmatically contribute to the mode of being and acting of social forms, whether these forms be identities, relations or collectives. Such an approach to pragmatics, which we propose to call constitutive, amounts to showing, both theoretically and empirically, that human interactants are not the only ones who should be deemed as “doing things with words” (Austin 1975), but that other figures — which can take the form of policies, statuses, tools, groups, collectives, etc. — can also be identified as being active in a given situation, especially through the way they are mobilized and staged in interaction. According to this approach, interactions can therefore be considered dislocated loci where specific con-figurations are (re-)produced and embodied. As we will see, such a constitutive view also allows us to deal with issues of power, authority and responsibility, three questions that tend to be relatively marginalized in pragmatic studies, especially when a performative and interactive viewpoint is adopted

Cognitive science · Embodied cognition · Epistemology · Linguistics · Performative utterance · Pragmatics · Social relation · Social science · Sociology · Computer Science · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Philosophy · Psychology