Abstract

In this article, three theoretic frameworks are discussed: optimality-theoretic, game-theoretic, and decision-theoretic pragmatics, the last being based on Ducrot’s argumentation theory. The close similarities between optimality-theoretic and game-theoretic pragmatics are pointed out. Concerning decision-theoretic pragmatics, some arguments are provided demonstrating that an independent, argumentation-theoretic grounding is neither needed nor useful. Rather, it seems more appropriate to incorporate the argumentation-theoretic insights into a general Gricean-oriented theory of natural language interpretation, let it be optimality-theoretic pragmatics or a game-theoretic variant.