"Classical Gricean pragmatics is usually conceived as
dealing with far-side pragmatics, aimed at computing
implicatures. It involves reasoning about why what
was said, was said. Near-side pragmatics, on
the other hand, is pragmatics in the service of
determining, together with the semantical properties
of the words used, what was said. But this raises
the [spectre] of 'the pragmatic circle.' If Gricean
pragmatics seeks explanations for why someone said what
they [sic] did, how can there be Gricean pragmatics
on the near-side? Gricean reasoning seems to require
what is said to get started. But then if Gricean reasoning
is needed to get to what is said, we have a circle."
--- which was, for Plato, the perfect figure.
No comments:
Post a Comment