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Metaphor and Metonymy in the Digital Age: Theory and methods for building repositories of figurative language
Edited by Marianna Bolognesi, Mario Brdar and Kristina Š. Despot
[Metaphor in Language, Cognition, and Communication 8] 2019
► pp. 175–198

Chapter 7
Figurative reasoning in hedged performatives

| University of Hamburg
| Independent scholar

This chapter combines a cognitive linguistic and a pragmatic approach to a specific class of speech acts known as hedged performatives, such as I can offer you a five-year contract, which, despite the modal hedge can on the illocutionary verb offer, conventionally counts as an offer. We demonstrate that analytical tools such as conceptual framing and metonymic inferencing shed light on the meaning and use of hedged performatives. Using corpus data, we show that the target meanings of indirect speech acts, including hedged performatives, are not coded, and therefore not compositionally computable. Rather, they are accessible through cognitive operations that humans perform spontaneously and automatically, making them a challenge to machine-based simulations of such mental processes.

Keywords: attitudinal hedge, conceptual framing, emotive hedge, entailment, illocutionary-force preserving, illocutionary-force canceling, metonymic inference, modal hedge
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Illocutionary force preserving hedged performatives
    • 2.1Single hedges
      • 2.1.1Modal hedges
      • 2.1.2Propositional attitude hedges
      • 2.1.3Emotive hedges
      • 2.1.4Entailment vs. metonymic inference
    • 2.2Double hedging
      • 2.2.1Emotive predicate plus modal
      • 2.2.2Mood plus modal
      • 2.2.3Conditional plus modal
  • 3.Illocutionary force canceling hedges
  • 4.The metonymic potential of can and must
    • 4.1The metonymic potential of can in assertive speech acts
    • 4.2The metonymic potential of must in assertive speech acts
      • 4.2.1Negatively evaluated and experienced obligations
      • 4.2.2Happily performed obligations
    • 4.3The metonymic potential of can in commissive speech acts
    • 4.4The metonymic potential of must and can in directive speech acts
  • 5.Conclusion and outlook
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 6 August 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/milcc.8.08pan
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Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Depraetere, Ilse & Gunther Kaltenböck
2023. Hedged Performatives in Spoken American English: A Discourse-oriented Analysis. Journal of English Linguistics 51:3 ► pp. 207 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2022. Introduction to Cognitive Pragmatics [Cognitive Linguistics in Practice, 4], DOI logo

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