Pragmatics

Pragmatics

1. Logic and Coversation

   • Conversational Category
     • Maxims
       • Quantity
         • Relates to the quantity of information to be provided
           • Make your contribution more informative as is required
           • Do not make your contribution more informative than is required
       • Quality
         • Supermaxim
           • Try to make your contribution one that is true
             • Do not say what you believe that is false
             • Do not say that for which you lack
       • Relation
         • Be relevant
       • Manner
         • Be perspicuous
           • Avoid obscurity of expression
           • Avoid ambiguity
           • Be brief
           • Be orderly
   • Implicature
     • Conversational Implicature
     • Conventional Implicature

2. The pragmatics of what is said

   • Pragmatic determinants of what is said
     • The convencional meaning of the words determines, or helps to determine, what is said, but it cannot be identified with what is said
   • The minimalist principle
     • A pragmatically determined aspect of meaning of what is said if and only if its determination is necessary for the utterance to express a complete proposition
   • The avaliability principle
     • In deciding whether a pragmatically determined aspect of utterance meaning is part of what is said, that is, in making a decision concerning what is said, we should always try to preserve our pre-theoretic intuitions on the matter
       • What is communicated
         • What is said
           • Sentence meaning
           • Contextual ingredients of what is said
         • What is conversationally implicated
   • The independence principle
     • Conversational implicatures are functionally independent of what is said
       • This means in particular that they do not entail, and are not entailed by, what is said
         • When an alleged implicature does not meet this condition, it must be considered as part of what is said
   • The scope principle
     • A pragmatically determined aspect of meaning is part of what is said
       • Not a conversational implicature
     • If and, perhaps, only if it falls within the scope of logical operators such as negation and conditional.
   • The Gricean picture
     • The meaning of a sentence convencionally determines, or helps to determine, what is literally said by uttering the sentence
       • Conversational implicatures are contextual implications of utterance act they are the assumptions that follow from the speaker's saying what he says togheter with the presumption that he is observing the maxims of conversation