Chapter 7
Making the implicit explicit
Free enrichment in interaction
Semantic underdeterminacy in the form of
unformulated syntactic slots is a widely-discussed research theme,
even though opinions differ about whether the interpretation is a
result of pragmatic processes of free enrichment (e.g., Carston 2004; Recanati 2002, 2004; Sperber & Wilson 1986/1995) or of
obligatory processes of the linguistic structure (Stanley 2007). Using a
conversation analytic approach, a corpus of narrative interviews can
show that interlocutors use a wide range of turns to deal with these
forms of semantic underdeterminacy. In narrative interviews,
prototypically the communicative functions of these turns (e.g.
repair, gaining time or developing the topic) are in relation to the
accessibility of possible candidates within the given context. The
empirical findings support the relevance theory account of free
enrichment.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.The Relevance theoretical perspective
- 2.1The conversational analytic perspective: Other-initiated repair
- 3.Method and data
- 3.1Narrative interviews: The corpus of the fall of the wall
- 3.2Data
- 4.Empirical analysis
- 4.1The implicit source term linguistically
- 4.2Possible meanings: Candidates and utterance formats
- 4.3The communicative function of elaborating implicit syntactic
slots
- 4.3.1Presenting accessible candidates with strategic
function
- 4.3.2Realizing repair in the case of two or a restricted set of
possible candidates
- 4.3.3Endless possible candidates or no candidate
accessible
- 5.Summary
- 6.Transcript conventions GAT II(Selting et al. 2009, selection)
-
Notes
-
References