pragmatics - thanks!

[Your Name]

What is "Neo-Gricean Pragmatic Theory" ...  ?


Doesn't it involve the Principle of Relevance?

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Au contraire, at least as I've seen the term applied (unless Dan means that
it involves being skeptical about the over-reliance on the Principle of
Relevance).  In our joint pragmatics seminar at the 1987 Linguistic
Institute at Stanford U., Steve Levinson and I introduced a distinction
(actually, the terminology was Steve's but I willingly jumped in) between
NEO-GRICEAN and POST-GRICEAN pragmatic theory.  As with other neo- vs. post-
dichotomies, the former was meant to allude to work that essentially follows
the original tradition, in this case the Gricean framework [cf. Studies in
the Way of Words, Harvard U. Press, 1989 for a grand posthumous compilation]
in which pragmatically determined components of meaning are (as much as
possible) "read off" semantically interpreted structure:  first you figure
out what is said, then--by applying the assumption that speaker and hearer
are rational, cooperative, etc.--you figure out what is meant (additionally
or in some cases instead).  The latter process invokes conversational (and
other) implicatures, although there are some significant differences from
the model first advanced by H. P. Grice, particularly as regards the number,
character, and interaction of the maxims of conversation used to calculate
implicata and on the question of the relation of pragmatic inference to
logical form.  A good place to look for a fairly full account of
contemporary neo-Gricean theory is Levinson's _Presumptive Meanings_ (MIT
Press, 2000), but I've published a book and a number of papers in this area
as well.  Post-Gricean theory departs much more radically from the Gricean
ur-text and is  closely identified with Relevance theory, which employs
(various versions) of the Principle of Relevance and the Guarantee of
Optimal Relevance, and was developed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson and
their colleagues and students, esp. at University College London, e.g. Robyn
Carston and Diane Blakemore.   RT assumes that only one general pragmatic
principle is needed, that of Relevance (as they define it), and forcefully
argues that it's impossible to determine what is said (i.e. the
truth-conditionally relevant level of propositional content) without
extensive applications of pragmatic inference (driven by the principle of
relevance).  Much less work remains to be done by implicature on this
approach.  The first and most detailed presentation of this theory is still
Sperber & Wilson's Relevance (Harvard U. Press, 1986, second edition 1995),
but there are many other more recent innovations and applications by the
writers named above (especially Carston) and their colleagues (see, for
instance, François Récanati).  A useful RT-oriented intro text is
Understanding Utterances by Blakemore.  If you want to get a sense of how
lively the disputes between neo- and post-Griceans can get, check out the
blood on the floor after the exchange in last year's Journal of Linguistics
between V. Zegarac & B. Clark on the one (RT) hand and G. Ward & L. Horn on
the (neo-Gricean) other.  It might also be claimed, with some justice, that
the two approaches are not quite as distinct as it is often claimed or
assumed.   (Because post-Gricean theory for all intents IS Relevance theory,
"RT" has pretty much pushed "post-Gricean pragmatic theory" off the plank,
but "neo-Gricean pragmatics" is still used for what many of us non-RT types
do.)

More could be said, but probably not on this list.  And remember I wasn't
the one who started this thread.   ;-)

larry

Not to worry. I started this thread and I want to thank you for the
abundance of information!!!  -Lina