Cover not available
Part of
Implicitness: From lexis to discourse
Edited by Piotr Cap and Marta Dynel
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 276] 2017
► pp. 147–176

Chapter 7
Lexical pragmatics and implicit communication

| University College London
| New York College Athens

In this paper, we consider what is implicitly communicated when the linguistically-specified (encoded) meaning of a word or phrase is modified in use. Well-studied examples of such modification include lexical narrowing, approximation and metaphorical extension. A striking feature of much research in this area is that narrowing, approximation and metaphorical extension tend to be seen as distinct processes which lack a common explanation; indeed, the philosopher Donald Davidson famously argued that since metaphor does not always determine “a cognitive content that its author wishes to convey and that the interpreter must grasp if he is to get the message”, it does not fall within the scope of a theory of communication at all. Using corpus data to shed light on some of the issues raised by this research, we will make two main points. First, there is a continuum of cases between literal use, approximation, hyperbole and metaphor, which favours the search for a unitary account that applies across the whole continuum. Second, what is implicitly communicated is not always a specific “cognitive content that the speaker wishes to convey”: rather, there is a continuum of cases with varying degrees of specificity, and an adequate theory of communication should explain the whole range.

Keywords: lexical narrowing, broadening, approximation, metaphor, communication, speaker’s meaning
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Lexical narrowing
  • 3.The continuum of literal, loose and metaphorical uses
  • 4.When narrowing and broadening combine
  • 5.The scope of a theory of communication
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 30 June 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.276.07wil
References
Blutner, Reinhard
1998 “Lexical Pragmatics.” Journal of Semantics 15: 115–162. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2004 “Pragmatics and the Lexicon.” In The Handbook of Pragmatics, ed. by Laurence Horn and Gregory Ward, 488–514. Oxford: BlackwellGoogle Scholar
Carston, Robyn
1997 “Enrichment and Loosening: Complementary Processes in Deriving the Proposition Expressed?” Linguistische Berichte 8: 103–127.Google Scholar
2002 Thoughts and Utterances: The Pragmatics of Explicit Communication. Oxford: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carston, Robyn, and Catherine Wearing
2011 “Metaphor, Hyperbole and Simile: A Pragmatic Approach.” Language and Cognition 3: 283–312. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Davidson, Donald
1978 “What Metaphors Mean.” Critical Inquiry 5: 31–47. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fauconnier, Gilles, and Mark Turner
2002: The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Geurts, Bart
2009 “Scalar Implicature and Local Pragmatics.” Mind and Language 24: 51–79. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Glucksberg, Sam
2001 Understanding Figurative Language: From Metaphors to Idioms. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2003 “The Psycholinguistics of Metaphor.” Trends in Cognitive Science 7: 92–96. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grice, H. Paul
1957 “Meaning.” Philosophical Review 66: 377–388. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1967 “Logic and Conversation” (William James Lectures), Harvard University.Google Scholar
1989 Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Horn, Laurence
2004 “Implicature.” In The Handbook of Pragmatics, ed. by Laurence Horn and Gregory Ward, 3–28. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
2012 “Histoire d’*O: Lexical Pragmatics and the Geometry of Opposition.” In New Perspectives on the Square of Opposition, ed. by J.-Y. Béziau and G. Payette, 393–426. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Jaszczolt, Kasia
2014 “Defaults in Semantics and Pragmatics.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2014 Edition). [URL]Google Scholar
Kolaiti, Patricia, and Deirdre Wilson
2014 “Corpus Analysis and Lexical Pragmatics: An Overview.” International Review of Pragmatics 6: 211–239. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lepore, Ernie, and Matthew Stone
2010 “Against Metaphorical Meaning.” Topoi 29: 165–180. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015 Imagination and Convention: Distinguishing Grammar and Inference in Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lascarides, Alex, and Ann Copestake
1998 “Pragmatics and Word Meaning.” Journal of Linguistics 34: 55–105. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lasersohn, Peter
1999 “Pragmatic Halos.” Language 75: 522–551. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lewis, David
1979 “Scorekeeping in a Language Game.” Journal of Philosophical Logic 8: 339–359. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levinson, Stephen
1983 Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
2000 Presumptive Meanings: The Theory of Generalized Conversational Implicature. Cambridge: Cambridge University PressGoogle Scholar
Noveck, Ira, and Dan Sperber
2007 “The Why and How of Experimental Pragmatics.” In Pragmatics, ed. by Noel Burton-Roberts, 184–212. London: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Recanati, François
2004 Literal Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
2010 Truth-Conditional Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson
1985 “Loose Talk.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 86: 153–171.
1986/1995 Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Sperber, Dan
, and Deirdre Wilson. 1998 “The Mapping between the Mental and the Public Lexicon.” In Language and Thought, ed. by P. Carruthers and J. Boucher, 184–200. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson
2002 “Pragmatics, Modularity and Mindreading.” Mind and Language 17: 3–23. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2008 “A Deflationary Account of Metaphors.” In The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor in Language and Thought, ed. by Raymond Gibbs, 84–105. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015 “Beyond speaker’s meaning.” Croatian Journal of Philosophy vol. XV, no. 44: 117–149.Google Scholar
Steen, Gerard, Aletta Dorst, Berenike Herrman, Anna J. Kaal, Tina Krennmayr, and Trijntje Pasma
2010 A Method for Linguistic Metaphor Identification. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vega Moreno, Rosa
2007 Creativity and Convention: The Pragmatics of Everyday Figurative Speech. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wharton, Tim
2003 “Natural Pragmatics and Natural Codes.” Mind and Language 18: 447–477. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2009 Pragmatics and Non-Verbal Communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wilson, Deirdre
2011a “Parallels and Differences in the Treatment of Metaphor in Relevance Theory and Cognitive Linguistics.” Intercultural Pragmatics 8: 177–196. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2011b “The Conceptual-Procedural Distinction: Past, Present and Future.” In Procedural Meaning: Problems and Perspectives, ed. by Victoria Escandell-Vidal, Manuel Leonetti and A. Ahern, 66–84. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
2016 “Reassessing the Conceptual–Procedural Distinction.” Lingua175–176: 5–19. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2017 “Relevance Theory.” In Oxford Handbook of Pragmatics, ed. by Yan Huang, 79-100.Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, Deirdre, and Robyn Carston
2006 “Metaphor, Relevance and the ‘Emergent Property’ Issue.” Mind and Language 21: 404–433. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2007 “A Unitary Approach to Lexical Pragmatics: Relevance, Inference and ad hoc Concepts.” In Pragmatics, ed. by Noel Burton-Roberts, 230–259. London: Palgrave. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2008 “Metaphor and the ‘Emergent Property’ Problem: A Relevance-theoretic Treatment.” The Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication 3: 1–40.Google Scholar
Wilson, Deirdre, and Dan Sperber
2002 “Truthfulness and Relevance.” Mind 111: 583–632. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012 Meaning and Relevance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Diez-Arroyo, Marisa
2020. The pragmatics of luxury. Círculo de Lingüística Aplicada a la Comunicación 83 ► pp. 25 ff. DOI logo
Scott, Kate
2021. Memes as multimodal metaphors. Pragmatics & Cognition 28:2 ► pp. 277 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 6 may 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.