33.3703, Review: Cognitive Science, Pragmatics, Semantics: Ifantidou, de Saussure, de Saussure (2021)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-33-3703. Fri Dec 02 2022. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 33.3703, Review: Cognitive Science, Pragmatics, Semantics: Ifantidou, de Saussure, de Saussure (2021)

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Date: Fri, 02 Dec 2022 17:18:55
From: Anais Auge [anais_a at outlook.fr]
Subject: Beyond Meaning

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/33/33-445.html

EDITOR: Elly  Ifantidou
EDITOR: Louis de  Saussure
EDITOR: Tim  Wharton
TITLE: Beyond Meaning
SERIES TITLE: Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 324
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2021

REVIEWER: Anais Auge, Université de Lorraine

SUMMARY

This volume, entitled “Beyond Meaning”, edited by Elly Ifantidou, Louis de
Saussure, and Tim Wharton, sheds light on different linguistic experiences
which cannot be adequately reflected in words and word meanings. In
particular, this volume is grounded in pragmatic theories, notably Relevance
Theory (Sperber and Wilson, 1990, 1995, 2015) and Grice’s theory of meaning
(Grice, 1989). 

Relevance Theory draws on Grice’s theory of meaning. Grice’s theory is based
on a continuum between “showing” and “meaning” (Grice, 1989). An instance of
“showing” provides direct evidence of the communicator’s intentions, while an
instance of “meaning” necessitates the recovery of intentions to be understood
by the recipients. Relevance Theory posits that “human cognition tends to be
geared towards the maximisation of relevance” (Sperber and Wilson, 1995: 260).
In other words, the communicators and recipients would tend to adapt the
language according to what is “relevant” in a given situation: what is already
accessible in this situation does not need to be explicitly mentioned and the
recipients may search for the communicator’s informative intention. Following
this principle, the recipients’ cognitive system would “gain” from this
linguistic exchange (between communicators and recipients) by processing the
information following the path of least effort to uncover the communicator’s
informative intention. Consider the following example extracted from Sperber
and Wilson (1990: 89):

I will be in Dublin tomorrow.

Suppose that this statement has been uttered by Mary as a response to Peter’s
invitation to a dinner in London tomorrow. Depending on the context, Peter can
infer that Mary cannot come to dinner, or that they can meet in Dublin (if
Peter lives in Dublin), or that they can meet the next day (if Mary does not
stay in Dublin). To uncover Mary’s communicative intention, Peter needs to
rely on his knowledge of the world, his knowledge of the communicator and the
situation, and his reasoning abilities (Sperber and Wilson, 1990: 89). 

These two theories are at the heart of the volume whose purpose is to look
into situations where the meaning cannot be explicitly stated nor adequately
paraphrased. For instance, contributors have investigated cases such as the
meaning of contrastive stress in English, metaphorical meaning, poetic
meaning, the meaning conveyed through literary works, humorous meaning,
meaning conveyed through onomatopoeia, and experiential meaning. The volume is
divided into three sections, which I summarise below:

Section 1, entitled “Beyond meaning: Ineffability and utterance
interpretation”, contains four chapters. The first chapter - “Beyond meaningNN
and ostension: Pragmatic inference in the wild”, by Stravos Assimakopoulos,
investigates cases where the communicators have no informative intention with
regards to a particular recipient. For example, overhearing or eavesdropping
on a conversation. The author concludes that the study of phenomena where the
communication is not overt, and where the transmission of information is not
intentional can significantly contribute to the field of pragmatics and can be
developed following the relevance-theoretic approach. The second chapter -
“Contrastive stress in English: Meaning, expectations, and ostension”, by Kate
Scott, investigates the interactions between contrastive stress and meaning in
English. It focuses on a prosodic phenomenon where the placement of the
accentuated syllable draws attention to a particular part of the intonation
phrase to imply some sort of contrast. For example:

YOU must do the washing up (Scott, 2022: 30).

By investigating the roles of expectation, interpretation, ostension (i.e.,
overt meaning), and prosody in communication, the author argues that
contrastive stress can guide the recipients to an intended interpretation and
that the unexpected prosodic pattern triggers an expectation of relevance: the
recipients need to process the information following the stress pattern in
order to decode the communicator’s intended meaning. Chapter 3 –
“Presupposition effects: Beyond and within speaker’s meaning”, by Misha-Laura
Müller – seeks to question the principles established in Relevance Theory by
analysing “presupposition effects”. “Presupposition effects” are related to
semantic and discursive presuppositions. On the one hand, semantic
presuppositions convey overtly intended determinate meaning. On the other
hand, discursive presuppositions serve as preconditions to the relevance of an
utterance (de Saussure, 2013: 179). For example:

Context: Mary leaving the house. She utters (3) to Peter who is still in bed:

(3) Mary: I took the umbrella.

A. There is one specific (or only one) umbrella at home. (semantic
presupposition)

B. It is raining/ it might rain outside. (discursive presupposition)

(adapted from Müller, 2022: 46)

By looking at different instances of semantic and discursive presuppositions,
the author argues that Sperber and Wilson’s theory is not sufficient to
account for presupposition effects and explains the need for an additional
dimension to the theory, which would consider the ostensive and less ostensive
meanings of an utterance. This is based on the claim that presuppositions are
not inherently part of what the communicator wants the recipient to recognise.
Chapter 4 - “Metaphor comprehension: Meaning and beyond”, by Elly Ifantidou –
intends to show the role of metaphors in meaning-making. The author describes
an experiment involving English language learners. She questions the fact that
metaphors can facilitate the interpretation of a statement that would have
been misunderstood if it was uttered literally. The results provided by the 39
participants lead the author to argue that metaphors can effectively help
recipients to decode the intended meaning of a utterance.

Section 2, entitled “Beyond meaning: Ineffability and the written word”,
contains three chapters. The first chapter is authored by Anna Piata,
“Conceptual mappings and contextual assumptions: the case of poetic metaphor”.
This chapter asks how the interpretation of poetic metaphors can be explained
through the framework established in Relevance Theory and Conceptual Metaphor
Theory (Lakoff and Turner, 1989; see also Tendahl and Gibbs, 2008). The author
argues that such theories miss the uniqueness of poetic metaphors. She
justifies her argument by demonstrating the richness of interpretations
arising from Modern Greek and English poetry. This leads to the conclusion
that such metaphors convey affective meanings (Scherer, 2005), which can be
accounted for in pragmatic theories. The second chapter – “An experiential
view on what makes literature relevant”, by Louis de Saussure – questions the
identification of literary works as a form of communication. It focuses on the
readers’ experiences and asks how such a form of communication can achieve
“relevance” when authors cannot systematically foresee the effects that their
works will have (e.g., as the author convincingly explains: “it would be odd
to speak of “misunderstanding” when it comes to poems and literary works” (de
Saussure, 2022: 103)). It is suggested that literary works can achieve
relevance for readers by triggering a rich experiential response (readers’
past experiences) which invites further considerations and reflections
(informative import). The third chapter – “Humorous means, serious messages: A
relevance-theoretic perspective on telling jokes to communicate propositional
meaning”, by Agnieska Piskorska – relies on Relevance Theory to investigate
how jokes can convey relevant informative content to recipients. By examining
different examples, the author demonstrates that jokes can convey
communicative import in a way similar to tropes such as metaphor, allegory, or
irony.

Section 3 is entitled “Furthur beyond: Ineffability by meaning/ showing”
(“Furthur” referring to the school bus in the American novelist Ken Kesey’s
“Merry Pranksters”, as indicated by the editors in their introduction to the
volume) and includes four chapters. The first chapter is by Nigel Fabb,
“Experiences of ineffable significance”. The author seeks to explain cases
where an experience involves “a sudden feeling of coming to know something
which is very significant, but which cannot be described in words” (Fabb,
2022: 135). The author suggests that such experiences are caused by the
feeling of surprise associated with the particularity of the context (the
moment, the environment, the experiencer’s body, culture, gender, etc). These
experiences are triggered by a matching of representations, following Andy
Clark’s (2013) predictive theory of the brain: our experience of the world
involves matching what we know with what we perceive. The second chapter –
“Hushed tones: Ceremonial treatment as a perspective shifter”, by Kate
McCallum and Scott Mitchell – investigates how works of arts, and ready-mades
in particular, can be experienced as interesting and profound cognitive
imports. The authors rely on Relevance Theory to show that the context of
artistic display invites recipients to pay a certain kind of attention to the
object which is associated with a very ceremonial treatment. This treatment
gives the recipients reasons to believe in the artist’s sincerity and ability
to make a “relevant” declaration. The third chapter – “Onomatopoeia,
impressions and text on screen”, by Ryoko Sasamoto – looks at the use of
onomatopoeia as textual inserts (telop) on Japanese TV. By referring to
Grice’s distinction between “showing” and “meaning”, the author discusses the
role of such inserts as a “bridge between verbal meaning and meaning beyond
verbal as part of a multimodal communicative act” (Sasamoto, 2022: 162). It is
suggested that telop is designed to guide viewers to search for relevance in a
way that suits the intention of TV producers. Chapter Four – “Before meaning:
Creature construction, sea sponges, lizards and Humean projection”, by Louis
Cornell and Tim Wharton – uses the principles of Grice’s theory to examine how
psychological processes complement each other to produce a sophisticated
sensorium. After documenting a series of experiments (notably involving sea
sponges and lizards), the authors conclude that the simpler processes –
sensations, feelings, emotions – enrich and deepen our experience of reality
and can complete existing theories of utterance interpretation.

EVALUATION

This volume offers an original view on pragmatic theories applied to cases
where language cannot account for one’s experiences of the world. This volume
will be of particular interest to scholars studying the vagueness and
ambiguity associated with language and communication (e.g., metaphor scholars,
psycholinguists, scholars interested in pragmatic implications and cognitive
effects).

I appreciated the contributors’ and editors’ efforts to describe such
non-verbal phenomena in a way that is tangible, well-illustrated, and
adequately explained. However, despite these helpful descriptions, it is to be
noted that this volume is not addressed to early-career research scholars.
Indeed, the scope of the volume is to go “beyond meaning” (which the
contributors convincingly achieve), but it remains deeply rooted in the
existing theories mentioned above, i.e., Grice’s theory of meaning and
Relevance Theory. In order to fully grasp the contributions presented in this
volume, readers need to be familiar with the concepts derived from these
existing theories. In this regard, I think the volume lacks a different sort
of introductory chapter which would summarise and explain these theories. This
additional chapter could also provide arguments regarding why relying on these
theories in current research is still significant (e.g., how have theories
been used in existing literature, to address which types of research
questions, in which contexts, and how these theories have evolved throughout
the years). The present Introduction to the volume fails to provide such
insights, which would have guided unfamiliar readers through the different
contributions presented in the volume. 

In addition, while the title of the volume “Beyond Meaning” attracts
attention, one might expect its contributions to actually go “beyond” existing
theories of meaning (depending on how one interprets the meaning of the
preposition “beyond”). Even if the contributors present original research
topics (e.g., looking at what cannot be linguistically expressed), the main
aim of these chapters is to show how these original topics can fit into the
principles established in existing seminal works. It looks to me as if the
contributors’ goal is to extend these principles to their subjects of
research, but not to transcend or question the claims made in such theories. 

The ordering of the three main sections (i.e., “Beyond meaning: Ineffability
and utterance interpretation”; “Beyond meaning: Ineffability and the written
word”; and “Furthur beyond: Ineffability by meaning/ showing”) guide readers
throughout the volume. For instance, Section 1 focuses on how linguistic
phenomena (e.g., metaphors, contrastive stress) can be interpreted by
recipients. Section 2 addresses questions related to psychological responses
to written language (e.g., humour, literature, poetic metaphor). Section 3
aims to explain psychological experiences which are neither triggered by words
nor expressed through language (e.g., a sudden feeling of coming to know
something, appreciation of a work of art, emotions). Therefore, the sections
gradually guide readers towards questions that are not typically related to
the field of linguistics. For this reason, Section 3 might fall beyond the
scope of linguistic research. This section might be read and appreciated by
readers who want to learn more about the ways theories of meaning can be
applied to different disciplines. I thus appreciated the editors’ efforts to
include a transdisciplinary approach to pragmatics. Section 3 convincingly
demonstrates that questions addressed in pragmatics – or linguistics, more
generally – can also serve different disciplines. 

Along these lines, I think that the editors made a mistake to include a
chapter on onomatopoeia in Section 3 (i.e., Sasamoto’s “Onomatopoeia,
impressions and text on screen”) because onomatopoeia represent a well-known
linguistic phenomenon: this particular chapter is thus deeply rooted in the
field of linguistics, unlike the other chapters included in Section 3. I think
this chapter would better fit into Section 1. 

Following the arguments presented in my above comments, I also would like to
highlight that most of the chapters offer convincing explanations with regards
to the pertinence of the research questions, methodologies, and analyses. Yet,
two chapters are particularly difficult to follow. In particular, the claims
made in the chapter about onomatopoeia mentioned in the above paragraph
(Chapter 3, Section 3) might be questionable to readers unfamiliar with the
Japanese language. I regret that the author did not provide more explanations
regarding the different interpretations of onomatopoeia in Japanese and in
English (in addition to the provided translations). Such explanations would
have been very helpful to understand how the Japanese onomatopoeia for
“looking away” and “staring” (Sasamoto, 2022: 172-3) can actually be discussed
as “onomatopoeia”. Another chapter that makes confusing claims in the volume
is Müller’s “Presupposition effects: Beyond and within speaker’s meaning”
(Chapter 3, Section 1). This might be the chapter of the volume that is the
most deeply rooted in existing pragmatic theories of meaning. For this reason,
the author often relies on different theoretical concepts (which are then
viewed in comparison with other theoretical concepts), but these concepts are
not sufficiently explained and illustrated. I regret that the author did not
focus on a more limited range of concepts. This would have enabled her to
discuss such concepts at length. In this way, the author could have presented
convincing arguments showing her contributions to existing theories. 

Overall, the volume would be of interest to scholars who want to learn about
approaches that can be adopted in linguistic research where the focus is on
instances of meaning that cannot be explained, paraphrased, or explicitly
inferred and decoded. Despite the reservations noted above, I acknowledge the
editors’ and contributors’ remarkable work in addressing such a complex topic
(i.e., writing about what cannot be expressed). From a general viewpoint, the
provided examples and illustrations are highly convincing and helpful to
reflect on the phenomena described in each of the contributions. 

REFERENCES

Clark, A. (2013). Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the
future of cognitive science. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 36(3),  181 –
204. 

De Saussure, L. (2013). Background relevance. Journal of Pragmatics 59,
178-189. 

De Saussure, L. (2022). An experiential view on what makes literature
relevant. In E. Ifantidou, L. de Saussure, & T. Wharton (eds), Beyond Meaning
(pp.99 – 119). Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Fabb, N. (2022). Experiences of ineffable significance. In E. Ifantidou, L. de
Saussure, & T. Wharton (eds), Beyond Meaning (pp.135 – 151).
Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Grice, P. (1989). Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.

Lakoff, G. & Turner, M. (1989). More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic
Metaphor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 

Müller, M.-L. (2022). Presupposition effects: Beyond and within speaker’s
meaning. In E. Ifantidou, L. de Saussure, & T. Wharton (eds), Beyond Meaning
(pp.43 – 61). Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Sasamoto, R. (2022). Onomatopoeia, impressions and text on screen. In E.
Ifantidou, L. de Saussure, & T. Wharton (eds), Beyond Meaning (pp.161 – 177).
Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Scherer, K.-R. (2005). What are emotions? And how can they be measured? Social
Science Information 44(4), 695 – 729. 

Scott, K. (2022). Contrastive stress in English: Meaning, expectations and
ostension. In E. Ifantidou, L. de Saussure, & T. Wharton (eds), Beyond Meaning
(pp.29 – 43). Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Sperber, D. & Wilson, D. (1990). Outline of Relevance Theory. Hermes – Journal
of Language and Communication in Business 3(5), 35-56.

Sperber, D. & Wilson, D. (1995). Relevance: Communication and Cognition.
Oxford, UK: Blackwell.

Sperber, D. & Wilson, D. (2015). Beyond speaker’s meaning. Croatian Journal of
hilosophy 15(2), 117-149.

Tendahl, M. & Gibbs, R. (2008). Complementary perspectives on metaphor:
Cognitive linguistics and Relevance theory. Journal of Pragmatics 40, 1823 –
1864.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Doctor Anaïs Augé is an Associate Professor affiliated to the University of
Lorraine (France), School of Information and Communication Studies. Her areas
of research include cognitive linguistics, pragmatics, and discourse analysis.
She studies the role of metaphors to communicate about global crises.





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