24.2782, Review: Pragmatics: Birner (2012)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-24-2782. Tue Jul 09 2013. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 24.2782, Review: Pragmatics: Birner (2012)

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Mateja Schuck, U of Wisconsin Madison
Anja Wanner, U of Wisconsin Madison
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Date: Tue, 09 Jul 2013 15:15:24
From: Catharine Welch [catharine.welch at mavs.uta.edu]
Subject: Introduction to Pragmatics

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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/23/23-5397.html

AUTHOR: Betty J. Birner
TITLE: Introduction to Pragmatics
SERIES TITLE: Blackwell Textbooks in Linguistics
PUBLISHER: Wiley-Blackwell
YEAR: 2012

REVIEWER: Catharine M Welch, University of Texas at Arlington

SUMMARY

Betty Birner’s ‘An Introduction to Pragmatics’ is an intriguing introductory
pragmatics textbook written for an intended audience of graduate students or
advanced undergraduate students. The text consists of ten chapters, with some
chapters focusing on more traditional pragmatic themes, such as Gricean
theory, speech acts, and deixis, while other chapters explore newer
directions, such as Neo-Gricean Theory, Relevance Theory, and Discourse
Representation Theory. Each chapter concludes with an “Exercises and
Discussion Questions” section, which allows students to practice new skills
acquired from the reading and/or to think critically about the topics
presented in the chapter.

Birner’s text distinguishes itself from other introductory pragmatics
textbooks by contextualizing pragmatics within the broader field of
linguistics, and specifically, by focusing heavily on the boundary between
semantics and pragmatics. Since is it assumed that the reader possesses no
previous knowledge of semantics or pragmatics (or even linguistics), the book
addresses and assesses the relationship between these two domains in such a
way that the reader simultaneously acquires knowledge about both pragmatics
and semantics. In the opening chapter, Birner presents possible ways that the
semantic/pragmatic boundary could be drawn and then continually revisits and
reassesses the boundary as various pragmatic topics and theories are
introduced in subsequent chapters. Almost every chapter, at some point,
circles back around to this discussion. The concluding chapter reviews the
various ways that the boundary can be drawn and why various researchers might
prefer one method over another, but no final dividing line is established.

Chapter 1: Defining Pragmatics

The first chapter of Birner’s textbook helps the reader to understand where
pragmatics fits within the larger field of linguistics and, specifically, how
to delimit the sometimes-fuzzy boundary between semantics and pragmatics. As
mentioned above, this motif of distinguishing pragmatics from semantics is a
recurring theme throughout the text and provides the basic lens through which
the book is written. This discussion begins by establishing the domain of
semantics with a detailed explanation of lexical semantics, sentential
semantics, and truth conditions. Birner then examines the domain of pragmatics
and defines significant terms such as ‘nonnatural meaning,’ ‘speaker meaning,’
and ‘referent.’ Two options for drawing the boundary between pragmatics and
semantics are given, one based on context-dependence and the other on
truth-conditional meaning. Birner concludes the chapter by explaining how
these perspectives are often wrongfully equated, resulting in a theoretical
oversimplification that erroneously positions semantics as an input to
pragmatics. She then gives linguistic examples that do not readily lend
themselves to such a model.

Chapter 1 also includes a small discussion on common methodologies used in
pragmatics research and contains a comparison of corpus-based approaches to
more traditional approaches, such as intuition, elicitation, and observation.

Chapter 2:  Gricean Implicature

The second chapter introduces the Gricean model of meaning and includes an
explanation of the ‘Cooperative Principle,’ a description of each of the four
maxims and their corresponding submaxims, and a discussion of a speaker’s
options of adhering, violating, flouting, or opting out of the maxims. Birner
then compares conversational and conventional implicature and their
corresponding tests. The chapter concludes by stating that Gricean theory
places semantics in the realm of “what is said” and pragmatics in the realm of
“what is implicated” (p. 74) by way of truth conditionality, but indicates
that some of the newer theories of meaning (covered in the following chapter)
will differ on this point.

Chapter 3: Later Approaches to Implicature

The third chapter focuses on Neo-Gricean Theory and Relevance Theory—the two
pragmatic theories that have developed since Grice’s theory (covered in
Chapter 2). Neo-Gricean Theory is presented both through the viewpoint of Horn
and the Q/R model and through Levinson’s Q/I/M model. Birner compares and
contrasts these viewpoints to each other as well as to Grice’s original
formulation, ultimately making a case for why both Horn’s and Levinson’s
models are considered to follow the tradition of the Gricean approach to
negotiated meaning even though they seek to reorganize and/or conflate his
maxims. Birner then shifts the focus to Relevance Theory, in which she
explicates how it departs significantly from Gricean and Neo-Gricean thought
by eliminating maxims altogether. The theory of relevance as a basic function
of human cognition is detailed, with an ensuing discussion of explicature as
it relates to truth-conditional meaning. At this point, Birner segues the
conversation back toward the overarching question of how to demarcate the
semantic/pragmatic boundary, indicating that in both Neo-Gricean Theory and
Relevance Theory, the boundary is largely determined by the theory’s approach
to truth-conditions.

Chapter 4: Reference

In the next chapter, Birner leaves behind the discussion of implicature from
Chapters 2 and 3 and revisits some of the concepts from the first chapter of
the book regarding the distinction between sense and reference. She then
transitions into a discussion on deixis, wherein four types are
explored—temporal, personal, spatial, and discourse. A lengthy section on
definiteness and indefiniteness of noun phrases (NPs) follows, presenting
various schools of thought as to what definiteness marks. While Birner
considers the merits of uniqueness, individuality, and familiarity, she
ultimately concludes that none of these is fully explanatory and that more
research is needed in this area. The concept of anaphora is presented through
a syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic point of view. The chapter concludes with
a critical look at referential and attributive uses of definite descriptions,
arguing that all uses—whether referential or attributive—have discourse-model
referents, and thus, are, in fact, referential in nature.

Chapter 5: Presupposition

Drawing on her discussion in Chapter 4 of the definite article (whose use
seems to assume, or presuppose, the existence of a referent), Birner turns the
conversation in the fifth chapter toward presupposition. While much of the
discussion centers on whether presupposition is a semantic or pragmatic
phenomenon, Birner notes that this issue does not directly feed into the
problem of the semantic/pragmatic boundary since the argument here is based on
the definition of ‘presupposition’ itself. Birner first looks at
presupposition from a purely semantic point of view, providing evidence via
defeasibility of presupposed information as to why this perspective comes up
short. She then looks at the topic from the pragmatic viewpoint—that
presuppositions are part of the common ground of speaker and hearer in
discourse—but also finds counterevidence against this perspective vis-à-vis
accommodation of presupposed information. She then brings the conversation
back to the issue of definiteness, wrapping things up with a brief look at how
definiteness, presupposition, and accommodation are interrelated.

Chapter 6: Speech Acts

Birner begins the sixth chapter by explaining why Speech Act Theory is planted
squarely within the field of pragmatics due to its heavy emphasis on speaker
intention and hearer understanding. Yet, she goes on to say that the theory
developed out of a desire to demarcate the semantic/pragmatic boundary. She
then defines ‘performatives,’ both implicit and explicit, and highlights the
problems that arise when pairing the Performative Hypothesis against
truth-conditional semantics. Having given evidence as to why the Performative
Hypothesis was abandoned, Birner begins laying the groundwork for an approach
to speech acts that closely follows Austin (1962). She defines felicity
conditions, locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts, and direct and
indirect speech acts. A mention of Politeness Theory and positive and negative
face follows. She ends with a brief remark on joint acts, observing that some
speech acts cannot be considered successful without “uptake” by the hearer.

Chapter 7: Information Structure

Returning to the concept of truth-conditional meaning, Birner’s seventh
chapter reminds the reader that previous chapters have examined word- and
discourse-level meaning and have determined that, in some cases, the meanings
are not influenced by truth conditions, and therefore, are more pragmatic than
semantic. She then turns to the question of non-truth-conditional meaning on
the sentence level and considers various instances of sentences not affected
by truth conditions. Non-canonical word order issues, including preposing,
postposing, and argument reversal (as seen through inversion and
passivization), are explored, along with their corresponding felicity
conditions. Much of this discussion questions whether individual constituents
are hearer-old or -new, or if they are discourse-old or -new, either
explicitly or inferentially.

Chapter 8: Inferential Relations

The eighth chapter takes a closer examination at how inferences are made and
categorized within  discourse. Birner acknowledges that inferences seem
obvious because they are so often intuited, but suggests that they are, in
fact, predictive and worthy of study. She revisits the non-canonical word
order examples from Chapter 7, but this time, through the lens of inferential
relationships, both at the constituent and propositional levels. Strength and
type of inference are discussed at the constituent level as a means to
roughing out a preliminary taxonomy of inferential relations, although Birner
admits that much research still needs to be done in this area. She closes the
chapter with a look at inference on the propositional level, in which she
reviews the concept of discourse coherence and examines its effects on
syntactic constructions.

Chapter 9: Dynamic Semantics and the Representation of Discourse

As Birner draws the book to a close, she hones in on the interaction between
semantics and pragmatics, whose relationship is at the heart of Dynamic
Semantics. Birner defines ‘Dynamic Semantics’ as various semantic accounts
that look toward pragmatic issues and “in essence create a mechanism for
allowing the prior linguistic context to affect the semantics of the current
sentence” (p. 272). One such account—Discourse Representation Theory (DRT)—is
explained in detail (albeit simplified from its current iteration for didactic
purposes), demonstrating to the reader what a dynamic model can and cannot do,
and how the two domains can relate to each other in such a model. Because DRT
challenges the idea that truth conditions necessarily delineate the domains of
pragmatics and semantics, Birner uses this aspect of DRT as a jumping off
point to resume the conversation regarding the semantic/pragmatic boundary.
She acknowledges that DRT highlights the fact that pragmatics sometimes slips
into the semantics realm and vice versa. At the same time, she points out
that, despite this “grey area” at the intersection of the two domains, many
facets remain decidedly in one camp or the other.

Chapter 10: Conclusion

In the final chapter, Birner succinctly but poignantly elucidates the value in
attempting to delimit the domains of pragmatics and semantics, despite the
fact that no final answer on the matter is given. She argues against several
commonly held beliefs about pragmatics—1) that it is simply a space to discuss
topics that do not fit neatly into the realm of semantics (however,
‘semantics’ is defined), 2) that semantics and pragmatics are sequentially
ordered, with pragmatics being considered only after semantic input has been
processed, and 3) the idea that certain phenomena that have traditionally been
considered pragmatic (e.g. pronoun resolution) are, in fact, semantic in
nature. These issues bring to light the tension (or harmony, depending on your
perspective, Birner says) between the two domains and the need to further
explore the scopes of these two fields. In fact, she encourages readers to
decide for themselves the value of asking the question in the first place and
suggests that perhaps the fact that no definitive answer is available will
inspire further research in this area. She bolsters her argument by providing
a number of contexts (e.g. legal, interpersonal miscommunication, technology,
and advertising) where the semantic/pragmatic boundary has very tangible,
real-world applications. She closes the book with a very brief look at where
pragmatics touches other subfields of linguistics (i.e. phonology and syntax),
but in the end, circles back around to semantics.

EVALUATION

Overall, Birner did an excellent job of making explicit her goals in writing
‘Introduction to Pragmatics’ and of accomplishing the task she set out to
do—mainly, to provide an introductory look at pragmatics concepts while
simultaneously assessing and challenging the boundaries of the subfield. From
the start, Birner makes it clear that she will focus heavily on the
semantic/pragmatic border, and indeed, this theme was a thread that tied the
entire text together. This recurring subtext throughout the book made for a
cohesive final product—one that was able to jump seamlessly from deixis to
implicature to Relevance Theory to anaphora, all the while building an
argument for why these items fit into the realm of pragmatics, or in some
cases, why they challenge previously held notions of how to define pragmatics.
In some ways, however, Birner sticks too closely to this theme to the
exclusion of other boundary issues within pragmatics. For example, while
Levinson’s oft-used ‘Pragmatics’ (1983) textbook makes it a point to detail
the overlap between the domains of pragmatics and sociolinguistics, Birner’s
text does not ever mention sociolinguistics. Even in her wrap-up section in
the final chapter, where she discusses how pragmatics touches other previously
unmentioned subdisciplines, only phonology and syntax are highlighted. While
certainly it could be argued that the sociolinguistic/pragmatic boundary did
not fall within the scope of the book, it was surprising to not see it
mentioned at all since students often question the relationship between these
two subfields.

Because of its emphasis on more recent research and its overarching goal of
constructing a theory of meaning, this book achieves success and relevancy in
ways where other texts fall short. Birner does an exceptional job of
highlighting problematic or preliminary research areas and of pointing out
where additional study is needed. This text goes beyond simply reviewing
topics and theories in pragmatics and asks the reader to engage in critical
thinking about these topics, with the hopes that the readers themselves will
be inspired to join the conversation through their own research. In terms of
reader accessibility, the book is appropriately paced and presented for a
graduate-level student. While Birner states that the book is intended for even
those with little to no linguistic background, I would hesitate to ask a true
linguistic novice to tackle this text. There is no way to use this book in a
classroom without simultaneously having a continual exchange about the
semantic/pragmatic boundary since it’s so interwoven into the text. Implicit
in this discussion is an extended conversation of how to construct a theory of
meaning and how pragmatics fits into broader linguistic theory. Being able to
think on this “big-picture” level could be a challenge for those who don’t
have a linguistic knowledge base to draw from, nor a grasp of the field as a
whole.

The text is logically sequenced, with many of the chapters segueing nicely
into the next. I actually found the final chapter—which provided a detailed
rationale of why and how to approach the semantic/pragmatic boundary and
real-world applications thereof— to be the most captivating. Although this is
meant to be a wrap-up of previous findings, in some ways, I believe the book
would grab students’ attentions more if this information were presented at the
beginning instead, as it helps give some justification as to why the boundary
conversation is important and necessary in the first place and how it
concretely connects to issues in our everyday world. This point aside, the
book does indeed make a compelling case for why pragmatists and semanticists
alike should give thoughtful consideration to the boundary between their two
domains.

REFERENCES

Austin, J.L. (1962). How to Do Thing With Words. Clarendon Press. 

Levinson, S.C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge University Press.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Catharine Welch, Ph.D., enjoys teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in
the linguistics department at the University of Texas at Arlington in
Arlington, TX. Her areas of interest include pragmatics, sociolinguistics,
educational linguistics, and Spanish.








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