прагматика и медиа дискурс / 语用学关键概念 Key Notions for Pragmatics (2009)
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140 MarcellaBertuccelll Papl
Finall}'•sociolinguisticshascontributed important insights in thestudyofimplicit meaningsattached to codeswitching and code-mLxing, stylesofspeech linked to sex, age and social status (Goffman 1967; Gumperz 1982).
In this article we shall concentrate on linguistic approaches to implicitness. Even so, we will re arict the exposition to an overview of the most basic notions related to implicitness in general. The broader theoretical issues involved will be mentioned briefly in §3. lt should be remarked, however, that to some linguists, including the writer. implicitness is related not only to propositional content,c; but also to aspects ofmeaning resulting from speakers> attitudes and emotions, as well as aspects of the (even non-intentional) effects an utterance rnay have on the hear· ers and their interpretations. Consequently, general concepts such as coherence, politeness, and involvement enter the discussion of implicitness phenomena. 1he restricted set of phenomena discussed below may ultimately have to be reinter· preted in such terms (see 2.6). Moving from similar remarks, Ostman (1986) treats implicitness as the defining characteristic of pragmatics. Though there are many borderline cases, in principle, pragmatics does not deal with explicitly commu· nicated meaning. fmplicitness, in that kind of framework, refers to any linguistic choices that aspeakercan in principledeny·that he orshehas made. Itgoes without saying, then, that in Ostman's view implicitness goes far beyond what can be cov
ered by the notions reviewed below.
1 . Historical note
In linguistics, thedebateon implicit meanings islongandintricate,datingbackat least to the yearswhen the claim for the autonomy ofsyntax seemed to relegate semantics to a purely interpretive role.
In those years, a largeamount ofpublicationswere produced todemonstrate that the well-formedness ofsyntactic structures owed a lot to hidden aspects ofsentence meaning. Thepivot ofthedebatewas the no1ion of•presupposition: and various theo· rieswere put fonvard that brought to theforeground the complex interpla)' ofsyntax. semantics and pragmatics in the identification ofsentence meanings.
The picture became even more complex when pragmaticsestablished itselfas an autonomous discipline, and the exploration of such notions as •utterance rneanin and 'speaker meaning' was undertaken. Grice drew the attention ofphilosophers and linguists to what an utterance can convey .implicitly in his work on conversational implicature.s and since then the study of implicitness has undergone continuous refinements,extendingbeyond the traditional boudariesofrhetoric to thedomainsof pS}'Chology. sociology, ideology research, thestudyofliterature, artificial intelligence, to mention but a few.
lmpllc.tn ss 141
2.Semantic and pragmatic categories of implicitness
In the linguistic literature, implicitness phenomena have been dealt with under various headings. Entailments.presuppositions,sous-entendus, implicatures, explicatures, implic· itures are the most widely used tenns. Some of them have been mostly studied by logic and logJcall)r based semantics, others are typically pragmatic. Since they are inferentially computed, they may also be referred to as 'inferences': it should be dear. however, that the term 'inference' can be used as a synonym for 'implicit meaning' only in so far as it denotes the outcome ofan inferential process. not the process itself. The latter may in fact involve further implicit premises which are not inferences in the sense assumed here.
2.1Entailment
The notion of •entailment' is a relation between semantic units, that is propositions, and it is drawn from classical logic. As .such it is defined in terms ofvalid inferences, or, alternativety, in terms oftruth values:
A entails B (A It B) tffB is true whencvtr A is true (or, in all worlc.ls where A is trut, B is true).
This is a fundamental category in logic, because it is the basis for all other logical relations. such as equivalence and contradiction. Thus, the proposition underlying the sentence "Molly is a cat" entails the proposition underlying the semtence "Molly is an animal":
(I} CAT (M) => ANIMAL (M)
As a consequence one cannot assert that Molly is a cat and deny that it is an animal: the result would be a contradiction.
Entailments are part ofthe content ofwhat issaid,and can neither be cancelled nor detached. Entailments became particularly attractive in linguistics when the notion of presupposition started to be debated. Semantic theories in fact saw the possibility of formall}r defining presuppositions as a special type of entailment.
2.2Semantic presupposition
Although linguistic surveys of presuppositions assume Frege (1892) as the corner· stone ofmodern discussions on presuppositional phenomena, the distinction between what an expression praestippottit and what it denotat is not a modern conquest. Horn (1996) points out that the relation although not as much fonnaliz.ed emerged in t11e Western tradition in the presupposition dependent sophisma of <hoice for the medievals "Do you still bent yot4r ass?' which in turn derives from the 3rd century
B.C. Megarians' "Have you stopped beatiugyourfatiJer?Answeryes or m>''.
144Mafcella Bertuccelll Pap!
(c) ·Implicative' verbs. In addition to factive verbs..which presuppose the truth oftheir complement sentence, Karttunen ( 1971) has identified another class of verbs which alsoinvolvepresuppositions,but in adifferentway.Theseverbs,which Karttunencalled implicative verbs..include numnge, remember. bother. get, dare, happm. as opposed to non-implicative verbs like agree. decide, want, hope, promise. plan. try. According to the sernantic definition ofpresupposition stated above, sentence (12) below does not 'presuppose' that George kissed Naomi, because ifwe negate the sentence the alleged presupposition fades away:
{11) George managed to kiss Naom1. )) a. George ktsscd Naomi.
(12) Georgedid not manage to kiss Naornt. ))a. George did not loss Naomi.
The negation of a sentence with an implicative predicate implies the negation of its complemenL However, note that (II) also suggests that George at least made an attempt to kiss thewoman,and that the action involvedsomedifficulty. These further implicated meaningsactuallysurvive in negativecontexts,and wehave the feeling that they are part ofthe truth conditions ofthesentence ifsomeone did not even try, it would be impossible to regard ( 11) as true hence theyqualifyas presuppositions:
(13)George managed tokiss Naomi. )) b. George tried to kiSS Naomi.
(14)George.- did nut manage to kiss Naom1. ))b. George tried to ktss Naom1.
To conclude, an implicative verb carries a presupposition of some necessary and sufficient condition which alone determines whether the event described in the complement took place. The main clause can be looked upon as a statement about whether this decisive condition is satisfied, and under what spatial and temporal circumstances. An asserted main sentence with an implicative verb. however, also commits the speaker to an implied proposition which is not a semantic presupposi· tion. but is all the same tightly connected towhat is said we might say it is part of semantic content ofthe predicate.
(d)Cltattge of stnte, inclwnttve and iterative verbs also presuppose theircom[plements:
(15)George has stopped smokmg ))George used tosmoke
(16)When he metSue,George slartc.-d to slammer.)) Ge-orge did notstammer before
mcdingSue.
(17) Sue rc-readhis thesis.)) Sue had read hts thesis be.-fore.
(e)Verbs ofjudging. Fillmore (1971) and McCawley (1975) discussed the implications ofsuchverbs as acct1se, blame, criticize, andlabelled them 'lexical presuppositions:The sentences below
(18) Sue is accused o(Jblarned/critictzed for slamming her husband.
involve the propositions ''Sue slammed her husband" and "slamming ones husband is bad' but. Fillmore remarked, accttse asserts that Sue did it and presupposes that it
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was bad, while criticize asserts that the deed was bad and presupposes that Sue was responsible for it.
Connotationsalsobelongto therealmoflexicalpresuppositions.Aclassicexample is assassinate, a verb which isused toassert that the referentofitsgrammatical object L<> killed, but, as vdth mr rder. there is a presupposition that the killing was intended. Hence, the awk'V\•ardness of
(19)The rebels accidentallyassassmatc:cl the kmg.
Moreover, the use ofassassinate is linked to a set ofpre,o;uppositions concerning the victim - the victim had a powerful political role, which stopped with hisdeath, and removing the power was the motive for the assassination. Thus onedoes not "assasst
· nate'' a parrot,a rockstaror apoet, nordoesoneassassinate apoliticalleader forsome irrelevant personal troubles.
{f) Presuppositions rnay be triggered by the sy ttacticform of the semence: clefting and pseudoclefting. for example, convey specific presuppositions:
(20)It is George who k1ssed aomi.
(21)The one whokissed Naomi IsGeorge.
While the conceptual meanings underlying (20) and (22) are identical and coincide \o\rith the conceptual meaning underlying the unmarked construction (22)
(22} George kissed Naomt.
that is. "there is an individual called George and there is an individual called Naomi and they were invotved in an act of kissing': the actual meanings conveyed by each ofthe sentences varyas a function ofthe different distribution ofinformation that is asserted and information that si presupposed: (20) presupposes that someone kissed Naomi and asserts that it was George; (21) presupposes that only one person kissed Naomi and that was George. The relationship between what is asserted and what is presupposed variesifdifferent constituentsare focalized: thus,in (23) it ispresupposed that someonewas kissed by George and it isasserted that it was Naomi.
(23} It is Naomi that Grorge kissed
Similar remarks hold for prosodic emphasis in spoken language: in (24) it is presup· posed that somebody kissed Naomi and it is asserted that it was George.
(24)GEORGE kiss«l Naomt.
(g)Tempornl clauses presupposethe truth ofthe content they convey:
(25)B fore leaving, George shut the windows. )} George le(L
(26)After thdr father'sdeath, they sold thdr large house. ))Their father died.
146Marcella Bertuccelll Papl
(h)Non-restrictive relntive clmJSes are not negated when the main clause is negated: they are therefore able to carry presuppositions:
(27)Hillary, who is a famous lawyer. has fourchildren. )) Hillary as a famous law}'er.
(i)Cozmterfactunls presuppose that the contrary of what is stated was the case
(28)Ifyou had hstcncd to my warnings, youwould not be in trouble now. )} You haw not listened to mywarnings.
(29)rfshe had not called him 'pig: he would not have felt so poor. )}She called him'pig:
All the cases discussed so far as examples ofsem<mtic presuppositions are based on the negation test. It has been shown, however. that semantic presuppositions also survive in another context, that is when the sentences which carry them are made into questior s. So the existential presupposition triggered by the proper name in "Sue is dancing a macarena" survives ifwe ask "Is Sue dancinga macarena?" and the same can be checked to hold for all our examples (b) through (i).
Survival to negation and question is not) however) a guarantee that the identified inference is a semantic presupposition. In order to include presuppositions within the class oflogico semantic categories we must demonstrate that the)rareaspects ofmean· ing associated v.rith a linguistic expression in a stable and invariant manner. that is, the)r do not vary when the context ofutterance varies.
Unfortunately, critical analyses of presuppositional phenomena have shown that this is nor the case: some alleged presuppositions may disappear in some contexts, and this proves that tile)' are neither stable nor invariant aspects of meaning. Consider a sentence like
(30) Sue criedbefore discus.smg her PhD thtsas.
According to our criteria. in (30) the temporal clause triggers the presupposition that Sue discussed her PhD thesis. but ifwe replace the verb "to cry'' with ''to die': the pre supposition disappears:
(31) Su dtcd before discussing her PhD thesis.
This follows from our knowledge of the world: we know that ifsomeone dies. he will no longer be able to do anything, and this type ofknowledge is stronger than the type ofknowledge involved in drawing the inference from the temporal clause.
Presuppositions cannot only be cancelled: they can be suspended, as in
(32) Tom will regn:t k1ssing Sue, tfhc everdid it.
Despite the factive verb. there is no way of assuming the truth of the fact that Tom kissed Sue from
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Otherkindsofcontexts can block presuppositions: ifthey are dependant onverbs of saying. for example, presuppositions are not inherited by the cotnplex sentence. Sentence (33} does not presuppo. e that he was not recommended. because the truth ofthe wholesentence dependson the sincerity ofhissaying.
(33)1om said that he wasgladhe had not been rccummendcd.
Norcan presuppositions survive within the scope ofpropositional attitude predicates: (34) does not presuppose that there is only one heir. as the definite description
would imply.
(34)1om bchcvcs he is the only hdr.
Propositional attitude predicates and verbs ofsaying therefore behave like 'plugs: in that theypreventpresuppositionstriggered byspecific lexical itemstobecome presup positions ofthe whole sentence. As such theyare contrasted by Karttunen (1973} with •holes: such as negations, modal verbs, and questions.andwitlll'filters'.the latterbeing represented by the connectives tmd. or. if...tlwlf which sometimes do sometimes do not let presuppositions pass.
The whole problem connected to the inheritance ofpresuppositions in complex sentences is known as the •projection problem' and it has been reputed to be the faral ftaw ofsemantic presuppositions. Although sonte scholars have tried to make up for the projection inconveniences by suggesting solutions for accomodating presupposi tions in the problematic contexts (Kempson 1975• Wilson 1 975; Wilson & Sperber 1979; Gazdar 1979). the projection problem has laid bare the uncontroversial fact that presuppositions are sensitive to the context. Consequently. they cannot be dealt with in entirely semantic terms: rather, theyhave to be treated as pragmatic phenomena.
2.3Pragmatic presuppositions
A pragmatic theory ofpresupposition hasbeen urged since the mid 70s, the seminal ideas being proposed by Stalnaker (1974. 1978} and Karttunen (1974}. 1f semantic analyses claimed that presuppositions are relations holding between sentences or propositions. pragmatic analyses of the phenomenon share the basic idea that the di...tinction;; between presuppositions and assertions should be drawn not in terms of the content expressed by asentence but in terms ofthe situation in which thesentence is uttered, which amow1ts to saying in terms of the auitudes and intentions of the speakerand his/her audience. On thisaccount,it is notsentenceswhichpresuppose it isspeakers: presuppositions are something like the background beliefsofthe speaker) propositions whose truth s/he takes forgranted. or seems to take for granted, in mak· ing his/her statement. In presupposing p, the speaker treats p as a non-controversial element in the context ofutterance. To presupposesomething is to take it for granted
