1、Chapter 1 Cognitive Pragmatics: An Overview,Presented by:Linda,What is “cognition”?,What is pragmatics?,Cognition: The mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses.(New Oxford),Pragmatics is often described as the study of language use
2、,Introduction An overview of Pragmatics From Philosophy of Language to Cognitive Science The Central Issues of Cognitive Pragamtics The Approaches to Cognitive Pragmatics The Relationship between Cognitive Pragmatics and Cognitive Linguistics,1.Introduction,In this chapter we will briefly highlight
3、a range of closely related, central cognitive pragmatics issues and approaches, including the philosophical origins of the term pragmatics, the main contributions of cognitive pragmatics, the approaches to cognitive pragmatics , the relationship between cognitive pragmatics and cognitive linguistics
4、 and the developing trends of cognitive pragmatics. The main purpose of this project is to provide a framework of how people understand utterances from a cognitive perspective,2. An Overview of Pragmatics,2.1The Origins of the Term “Pragmatics” References to pragmatics are found in philosophy since
5、Charles Morris Foundations of the Theory of Signs in which pragmatics is defined as the study of the relations between signs and their interpreters.,Morris is famous for his trichotomy syntax, semantics and pragmatics. After Morriss version of trichotomy, the German philosopher and logician Rudolf C
6、arnap in his book Introduction to Semantics reformulated the trichotomy as follows: If in an investigation explicit reference is made to the speaker or the user of the language, then we assign it (the investigation )to the field of pragmatics. If we abstract from the user of the language and analyze
7、 only the expressions and their designation, we are in the field of semantics. And ,finally ,if we abstract from the designation also and analyze only the relations between the expressions , we are in syntax.,2.2Defination of Pragmatics,Pragmatics is the study of all those aspects of meaning not cap
8、tured in a semantic theory.(Levinson) Or as Gazdar has put it, assuming that semantics is limitied to the statement of truth conditions: Pragmatics has as its topic those aspects of the meaning of utterances which cannot be accounted for by straightforward reference to the truth conditions of the se
9、ntences uttered. PRAGMATICS=MEANING THRUTH CONDITIONS (what falls out of semantics is within the scope of pragmatics),2.3 The Historical Development of Pragmatics,Morris: The trichotomy of semantics Wittgenstein:slogan Meangning is use indicates his pragmatic perspective in semantic theory J. Austin
10、:How to do things with words American philosopher J.R.Searle :Speech act William James:lectures about Logic and Conversation helped boost the development of pragmatics Harmut Haberland and Jacob L.Mey co-edited:Journal of Pragmatics Pragmatics was established as an independent discipline.,3.From Phi
11、losophy of Language to Cognitive Science,Broadly speaking there are two perspectives on pragmatics: the “philosophical” and “cognitive”. From the philosophical perspective, an interest in pragmatics has been largely motivated by problems and issues in semantics A cognitive science conception of prag
12、matics as a mental processing system responsible for interpreting ostensive communicative stimuli has effected a transformation in the pragmatic issues pursued and the kinds of explanation offered.,The term cognitive pragmatics has been used since the mid-1980s,but the studies that fit this label ha
13、ve been made since the mid-1970s. Theoretical work in pragmatics that can be incorporated into cognitive pragmatics has been done by philosophers since the 1960s. Some philosophical work has been done within cognitive pragmatics, setting a general theoretical framework for cognitive studies of langa
14、uge use.,3.1Gricean Philosophical Approach to Langauge,Grice took a philosophical appraoch to pragmatics. He was interested in such questions as what is meaning? What is it for a speaker to say, or assert something as opposed to implying it? How might a rational hearer decide what a rational speaker
15、 intended to imply? Thus he introduced a new conceptual tool : the notion of implicature.,Grices apporoaches have two foundational ideas. The first is that sentence meaning is a vehicle for conveying a speakers meaning, and that a speakers meaning is an overtly expressed intention which is fulfilled
16、 by being recognized. The second is that in inferring the speakers meaning , the hearer is guided by the expectation that utterances should meet some specific standards, that is the best hypothesis is the one that satisfies certain expectations about what speakers are aiming at and what standards th
17、ey are trying to meet. (CP),Steve: Are you going to the big party this weekend? Sally: Didnt you hear that Bob is going to be there?,3.2The Main Problems of Grices Approach,1.Grice didnt say much about why communicators use CP and maxims as the evaluation measure and not others. 2. Many of the terms
18、 in the CP and maxims are left unexplained. 3. His account lacks of an explicit comprehension procedure and offers no suggestions about how the process of looking for a satisfactory interpretation might be done. 4. Grices theory is restrictive . 5.Grice treated the comprehension process as a form of
19、 conscious ,deliberate reasoning.,3.3 Neo-Gricean Pragmatic Theory,The Neo-Gricean program attempts to combine an inferential account of communication with a view of language strongly influenced by formal semantics and generative grammar.,3.4 The emergence of Cognitive Pragmatics,The previous pragma
20、tic principles and theories did not attach great importance to the role that human mind played in the understanding of utterances , and did not realize that the language semiotics used in communication were not only the reflection of human cognition, but also the mental representation of objects in
21、the human brain. Based on the philosophical foundation of pragmatics and the development of cognitive science, cognitive pragmatics came into being.,4.The Central Issues of Cognitive Pragmatics,1.It is a system for interpreting human actions/behaviors in terms of the mental states underlying them. 2
22、.It is a system for the understanding of communicative behavior, that is , for figuring out what the producer of the ostensive behavior is trying to communicate 3.It is dedicated to the understanding of specifically linguistic communicative behavior.,4.1 Two principles of Relevance,Relevance is defi
23、ned as a property of inputs to cognitive processes. Relevance Theory is based on two fundamental claims, one about cognition, the other about communication. (Speber,Wilson),Two principles,1)Human cognition tends to be geared to the maximization of relevance 2)Every act of overt communication communi
24、cates a presumption of its own optimal relevance.,4.2Non-demonstrative Inference,Non-demonstrative inference 非论证性推理Sperber和Wilson认为，人们在言语交际中使用的主导推理形式是演绎法，“人脑自发地运用的逻辑法便是演绎法”，而这种演绎法是非论证性的。 非论证性的推理-按一定的思维规律集语言和非语言知识于一体的过程，是日常生活中人们所作的比较随意的推理，这个推理所得到的结论不具有确定性，在某个语境中这个结论可能是正确的，但换一个语境，它可能就不正确或被取消。例如：动物园的警卫
25、在狮虎山附近抓到三个捣乱的顽童，把他们带到了园长办公室。园长是个很喜欢小孩子的老头，他问其中最大的那个孩子。“你叫什么啊？”“王晓明。”“你是为什么被带到这里来的呀？” “刚才我想用花生喂老虎”。园长一想，这虽然违反规定。但也不是什么大不了的事情，就告诉晓明不要随便喂动物事物，这样很危险，然后就放他出去了。接着问第二个孩子，第二个孩子也说想把用花生喂老虎，同样，园长也把他给放了。园长接着问最后一个脸红扑扑、胖嘟嘟的最小的孩子，“那你叫什么名字呢？”小男孩羞涩的说：“我叫叫，叫大刚，因为我长的胖，同学们都叫我花生。”论证性的推理-纯粹的形式推理过程，在此过程中，前提的命题在语义上是完整的，只要命
26、题真实，且遵循推理法则，推理得出的结论的有效性是有保障的。例如：All men are mortal. (premise)Socrates is a man. (premise)Socrates is mortal. (conclusion),4.3 Cognitive Context,By “context” here, I mean not simply the preceding linguistic text, or the environment in which the utterance takes place, but the set of assumptions brough
27、t to bear in arriving at the intended interpretation. These may be drawn from the preceding text, or from observation of the speaker and what is going on in the immediate environment, but they may also be drawn from cultural or scientific knowledge, common-sense assumptions, and, more generally, any
28、 item of shared or idiosyncratic information that the hearer has access to at the time. (D. Wilson, Relevance and Understanding),Linguistic context: the lexical items that come immediately before or after any word in an act of communication.And even the whole passage or the whole book. Non-linguisti
29、c context: social context, situational context and cultural context.,4.4 Explicature and Implicature Distinction,Explicature: An assumption communicated by an utterance U is explicit. If and only if it is a development of a logical form encoded by U. Implicature: An assumption communicated by U whic
30、h is not explicit is implicit.,5. The Approaches to Cognitive Pragmatics,5.1Quantitative Research and Qualitative Research Quantitative Research is empirical research where the data are in the form of numbers Qualitative Research is empirical research where the data are not in the form of numbers.,5
31、.2 Major Research Methods of Cognitive Pragmatics,Intuition and Introspection Questionnaire Experimentation Language Analysis Comparative and Contrastive Analysis Approximation,6. The Relationship between Cognitive Pragmatics and Cognitive Linguistics,Some scholars in China such as He Ziran，Ran Yong
32、ping and Wang Yin regard cognitive pragmatics as a sub-branch of cognitive linguistics.,The Differences between Cognitive Pragmatics and Cognitive Linguistics,Cognitive linguistics attach great importance to the study of the relations between language and human cognition, which is closely related to the conceptual structure and conceptual meaning. Cognitive pragmatics concentrates on the meaning of utterances namely the speakers meaning.,thank you!,
