Being ambivalent by exploiting indeterminacy in the explicit import of an utterance
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20484236 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Agnieszka Piskorska (0000-0002-7297-1776, University of Warsaw, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 28 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 376-393 |
| Publication date | 2021-12-31 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Pragmatics & Cognition (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0929-0907 • E-ISSN: 1569-9943 |
| Publisher | John Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL) |
| DOI | 10.1075/pc.21016.pis |
| OpenAlex | W4285313406 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 20 |
In line with recent interest in weak and often not fully determinate effects of communication permeating relevance-theoretic research, I contribute a discussion on two possible sources of speaker-intended indeterminacy within explicit import of an utterance: one residing in an intentionally underspecified location of an ad hoc concept between literal or non-literal (e.g. metaphorical or hyperbolic) interpretation, and the other lying in the higher-level explicature of an utterance, and being related to propositional attitude (e.g. pretence, reporting, dissociation) or speech-act description (e.g. complementing, reproaching). In both cases, the speaker leaves a certain amount of indeterminacy concerning the degree of her commitment to the content communicated, by not indicating where precisely the concept or the attitude is to be located on the literalness-metaphor continuum or on the continuum of various propositional attitudes/speech-act descriptions, respectively. Using a number of illustrative examples drawn from television discourse, I try to show that this kind of intended indeterminacy gives rise to communicative effects of a non-propositional kind. Additionally, the analyses presented here support the deflationary view of figurative uses of language, on which they form continua with non-figurative utterances
Ambivalence · Epistemology · Linguistics · Literal and figurative language · Metaphor · Utterance · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology
Thoughts and Utterances
A unitary approach to Lexical Pragmatics
A Deflationary Account of Metaphors
Propositional attitude, affective attitude and irony comprehension
Natural categories
Is the Concept of Incongruity Still a Useful Construct for the Advancement of Humor Research
Linguistic form and relevance
Non-propositional effects in verbal communication
The pragmatics of verbal irony
Hyperbolic language and its relation to metaphor and irony
Functional proposition
Pragmatics and the challenge of 'non-propositional' effects
| Citations per year | 0.5 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2024 - 2024 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |