Pragmatic Meaning

Analyzing pragmatic meaning

We focused on how we can mean much more than we say1 or utter. We discussed how various types of pragmatic meaning representations have grown out of the classic Gricean distinction between what is said (cf. saying2) and what is implicated (cf. implying). In the course of this discussion, we pointed out that some approaches to pragmatic meaning, for example (neo-)Gricean accounts, are essentially speaker-centred, that is, they focus on the meaning representations the speaker intends or makes available through what he or she says1 (as well as doesn’t say1). Yet other approaches, for instance relevance theory, are largely hearer-centred approaches, that is, they seek to explain meaning representations attributed to the speaker by the hearer.

We start by tackling the question of pragmatic meaning from the perspective of users, showing how these different perspectives can add an additional layer of complexity to our understanding of pragmatic meaning. We then move to a consideration of how meanings are understood by users, not only at the utterance level but also across sequences of utterances, or what is normally called discourse (although this broader concern with discourse should not to be confused with discourse pragmatics, another term for informational pragmatics, as introduced). This involves a move away from the traditional focus on the meaning of single utterances to a consideration of how pragmatic meanings arise in interactions. We conclude with a consideration of pragmatic meaning in various contexts, and how these various dimensions of pragmatic meaning might intersect. In this way, we aim to show that pragmatic meaning is much more complex and multi-faceted than is often appreciated in approaches that focus primarily on accounts of pragmatic meaning representations.