Between Scylla and Charybdis

The semantics and pragmatics of attitudes 'de se

Datos Bibliográficos

ID5824593
AutoresAlessandro Capone (0000-0001-6584-9767, autor de correspondencia)
Año2010
Volumen7
Número3
Fecha de publicación2010-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaIntercultural Pragmatics (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1612-295X • E-ISSN: 1613-365X
EditorialDe Gruyter (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/iprg.2010.021
OpenAlexW2013565905
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas9
Referencias citadas41

In this paper I propose that pragmatic principles and mechanisms are at play in the recovery of 'de se' attitudes in English (and in Italian), in cases in which grammatical and semantic information does not exclusively determine the 'de se' interpretation. I claim that the pragmatic processes at work in utterances reporting 'de se' attitudes are cases of free enrichment. In free enrichments, although there does not seem to be either an overt indexical or a covert slot in the linguistically decoded logical form of the sentence uttered, the logical form nevertheless needs to be conceptually enriched in the explicature (Huang, Pragmatics, Oxford University Press, 2007:191). I develop my view in the relevance-theoretic framework, according to which the human cognitive system works in such a way as to tend to maximize relevance with respect to communication, the principle of relevance being responsible for both the explicit and implicit content of an utterance. However, I should acknowledge that I was also influenced by Levinson's (Presumptive meanings, MIT Press, 2000) ideas about pragmatic intrusion. I propose to add another type of intrusive construction: attitudes 'de se

Cognitive semantics · Cooperative principle · Covert · Indexicality · Relevance · Relevance theory · Utterance · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation