Discourse and pragmatics. A cognitive perspective

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the connections between semantics, pragmatics, and discourse. The underlying assumption for this enterprise is the belief that an explanatorily adequate account of discourse processes cannot be independent of semantics and pragmatics. The paper adopts a maximalist view of semantics in which the meaning of sentences is seen as a result of complex patterns of interaction between different cognitive models (Lakoff, 1987). These include propositional models, metaphor, metonymy, and image-schemas. The maximalist approach to semantics is combined with a broad view of inferential pragmatics according to which meaning derivation is regulated by the presumption of optimal relevance, i.e. the speaker's presumed desire to achieve the maximum number of meaning effects for the least processing effort (Sperber and Wilson 1995). Cognitive model theory attempts to capture all the richness of semantic characterisations. This endows the theory with a huge potential to account for inferential activity and the ability of people to create conceptually connected texts. Inferential pragmatics contains all the criteria necessary to explain how semantic descriptions are used strategically to create text. Text is the result of adequate balancing explicit and implicit information on the basis of relevance. This is done through what we may call cued inferencing, i.e. making inferences on the basis of prompts provided by linguistic expressions (usually underspecified semantic representations) in connection to a context.