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Presumptive Reasoning in Interpretation. Implicatures and Conflicts of Presumptions

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Abstract

This paper shows how reasoning from best explanation combines with linguistic and factual presumptions during the process of retrieving a speaker’s intention. It is shown how differences between presumptions need to be used to pick the best explanation of a pragmatic manifestation of a dialogical intention. It is shown why we cannot simply jump to an interpretative conclusion based on what we presume to be the most common purpose of a speech act, and why, in cases of indirect speech acts, we need to depend on an abductive process of interpretation.

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Notes

  1. These felicity or “meaning” (in Grice’s sense) conditions will be referred to simply as “presuppositions” in this paper, considering the dialogical or pragmatic meaning of this concept.

  2. In Ducrot’s view, the communicative game resembles a chess game, in which the possibilities are set by means of presuppositions: “dans ce combat simulé –qui substitue aux possibilités réelles, dues à la force, les possibilités morales dues aux conventions- les règles permettent aux joueurs de se contraindre mutuellement à certaines actions, et de s’en interdire certaines autres” (Ducrot 1968, p. 83); “pour trouver une description sémantique satisfaisante d’un phénomène comme la présupposition, phénomène qui est repérable selon des critères syntaxiques précis, il nous a été nécessaire de la relier aux règles qui définissent conventionnellement le jeu du langage, et de décrire la présupposition par rapport aux manœuvres dont elle fournit le thème: sa réalité, comme celle d’une règle des échecs, consiste seulement à rendre possible un jeu” (Ducrot 1972, p. 27).

  3. In this case, we can notice that the speaker risks a negative judgment (“Are you teasing me?”).

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  1. ArgLab, Institute of Philosophy of Language (IFL), Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Edifício I&D—4 andar, Avenida de Berna 26, 1069-061, Lisbon, Portugal

    Fabrizio Macagno

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Correspondence to Fabrizio Macagno.

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I would like to thank the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portugal) for the research grant supporting the project Argumentação, Comunicação e Contexto (PTDC/FIL-FIL/110117/2009).

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Macagno, F. Presumptive Reasoning in Interpretation. Implicatures and Conflicts of Presumptions. Argumentation 26, 233–265 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-011-9232-9

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