Publications

This paper investigates the question whether implicative verbs should be considered as soft presupposition triggers, i.e., as triggers activating optional context repairs. I present the results of an experiment in which test subjects were asked to read short dialogues containing either presupposition triggers or conversational implicatures and, next, answer the questions regarding the information communicated on the level of presupposition or implicatures, respectively. The results of within-subject ANOVA show that presuppositions activated by the use of implicative verbs are significantly less accessible and illicit significantly longer response times than presuppositions activated by the use of hard triggers, suggesting that they can be classified as soft presupposition triggers. The obtained results also show that presuppositions activated by the use of different triggers are heterogenous in regards to the accessibility of information.

My aim in this paper is to contribute to the debate on the foundations of semantics and pragmatics by developing an Austinian alternative to the Gricean programme. The Gricean approach has been criticised by Ernie Lepore and Matthew Stone who claim that most of the interpretive effects that are usually accounted for as inferentially recognized aspects of meaning are in fact determined by grammar. I argue, however, that it is the Austinian perspective rather than the extended-grammar outlook, that constitutes a genuine alternative to the Gricean programme. Viewed from the Austinian perspective, using language is a social practice that consists of performing conventional speech acts: acts done conforming to a convention. Unlike the Griceans and the proponents of the extended-grammar outlook, however, the Austinians assume that following a convention is not an algorithmic procedure, but a socially controlled process that involves interactional negotiation. They claim, namely, that each language convention — phatic, rhetic, illocutionary, rhetorical, procedural, etc. — is a lineage of reproduced precedents that put some constraints on what can be regarded as saying and doing the same, but underdetermine the exact properties of its new members.

In this paper we evaluate the role of prosodic information in inferring dialogue-specific functions of speech acts. We report the results of an empirical study in which participants are exposed to recordings of certain utterances and, next, asked to recognize discursive contexts from which the heard utterances may come. The recorded utterances are quotations: staged utterances produced by speakers asked to read aloud dialogues specially constructed for the study. We analyse prosodic cues produced by recorded speakers and argue that they play a key role in depicting demonstrated target utterance. We assume that participants’ decisions manifest their implicit understanding of dialogue-specific functions of target utterances. The empirical part of our study shows that the efficiency rate of the prosodic cues produced by recorded speakers is 76%. We use the results of our prosodic analysis of recorded utterances to account for some cases of incorrect interpretations reported in the study.

The paper develops a speech act-based model of verbal irony. It argues, first, that ironic utterances are speech actions performed as conforming to a socially accepted procedure and, second, that they are best understood as so-called etiolated uses of language.

The paper is organized into four parts. The first one elaborates on Austin's doctrine of the etiolations of language and distinguishes between the normal or serious mode of communication and its etiolated mode. The second part discusses the dominant approaches to verbal irony and argues that the irony-as-a-trope theories can be viewed as attempts to describe ironic utterances as cases of normal speech, whereas the metalinguistic theories seem to treat them as etiolated uses of language. The third part proposes a set of felicity conditions for ironic acts and puts forth a hypothesis that echo and overt pretence are complementary techniques of linguistic etiolation used for ironizing. The fourth part uses the proposed model to discuss the social dimension of ironizing and argues that utterances intended as acts of ironizing may trigger the accommodating process of context-repair. The take-home message is that ironic utterances are essentially social actions: acts performed by invoking a socially accepted procedure.

Abstract: The aim of this paper is twofold. First, the author examines Mitchell Green’s (2009) account of the expressive power and score-changing function of speech acts; second, he develops an alternative, though also evolutionist approach to explaining these two hallmarks of verbal interaction. After discussing the central tenets of Green’s model, the author draws two distinctions – between externalist and internalist aspects of veracity, and between perlocutionary and illocutionary credibility – and argues that they constitute a natural refinement of Green’s original conceptual framework. Finally, the author uses the refined framework to develop an alternative account of expressing thoughts with words. In particular, he argues that in theorising about expressing thoughts with words – as well as about using language to change context – we should adopt a Millikanian view on what can be called, following Green, acts of communication and an Austinian approach to speech or illocutionary acts. Funding: The preparation of this work was supported by the National Science Centre, Poland, through research Grant No. 2015/19/B/HS1/03306 “Intentions and Conventions in Linguistic Communication: A Non-Gricean Programme in the Philosophy of Language and Cognitive Science”.

Abstract: My aim in this paper is to examine Mitchell S. Green’s notion of self-expression and the role it plays in his model of illocutionary communication. The paper is organized into three parts. In Section 2, after discussing Green’s notions of illocutionary speaker meaning and self-expression, I consider the contribution that self-expression makes to the mechanisms of intentional communication; in particular, I introduce the notion of proto-illocutionary speaker meaning and argue that it is necessary to account for acts overtly showing general commitments that are not ‘marked’ as being specific to one or another illocutionary force. In Section 3, I focus on Green’s account of expressive norms and argue that their function is to stabilize rather than constitute the structure of illocutionary signalling systems; moreover, I examine critically Green’s idea according to which expressive norms enable us to indicate the force of our speech acts and suggest that they play a key role in the mechanisms for epistemic vigilance. Finally, in Section 4, I elaborate on the idea of discourse-constituted thoughts—or, in other words, thoughts that exist in virtue of being expressed in making certain conversation-bound speech acts—and use it to develop a more comprehensive model of the expressive dimension of speech acts. Funding: The preparation of this work was supported by the National Science Centre, Poland, through research Grant No. 2015/19/B/HS1/03306 “Intentions and Conventions in Linguistic Communication: A Non-Gricean Programme in the Philosophy of Language and Cognitive Science”.

Abstract: In this paper, I examine two non-Gricean approaches to the evolution of human communicative abilities: Mitchell S. Green’s account of organic meaning and Dorit Bar-On’s account of expressive communication. I argue that the non-Gricean approaches in question face certain problems: i) they focus on the adaptive function of communicative behaviours and ignore questions about their mechanisms, ontogeny and phylogeny; ii) the notion of organic meaning does not constitute an intermediate form between natural and non-natural meaning but should rather be understood as a special case of natural meaning; iii) the non-Gricean approaches under scrutiny cannot explain the transition from dyadic to triadic communication. I also outline the differences between Gricean and non-Gricean approaches and argue against the usefulness of the non-Gricean approaches discussed in this paper in explaining the evolution of human communicative abilities. Funding: The preparation of this work was supported by the National Science Centre, Poland, through research Grant No. 2015/19/B/HS1/03306 “Intentions and Conventions in Linguistic Communication: A Non-Gricean Programme in the Philosophy of Language and Cognitive Science”.

Abstact: In this paper, I argue that the distinction between standard and non-standard pragmatic implications, originally used to differentiate among types of conversational implicatures, applies to the family of contents—traditionally referred to as ‘presuppositions’—that exhibit projective behaviour. Following the scholars working within the Question Under Discussion model of communication, I distinguish between two types of projective implications: suppositions and presuppositions narrowly construed. Next, I identify two rules of appropriateness that govern the use of, respectively, supposition-triggering and presupposition-triggering expressions. Finally, I argue that the ostentatious violation of the rules in question gives rise to non-standard projective implications, whereas their observance results in standard suppositions and presuppositions; I also use the idea of discourse coherence to develop a sketchy account of the mechanisms underlying the functioning of non-standard projective implications. Funding: The preparation of this work was supported by the National Science Centre, Poland, through research Grant No. 2015/19/B/HS1/03306 “Intentions and Conventions in Linguistic Communication: A Non-Gricean Programme in the Philosophy of Language and Cognitive Science”.

In the article we present a model of communicative irony formulat-ed within the framework of speech act theory. We claim that acts of verbal irony are special cases of phenomena that John L. Austin referred to as “etiolations of language”. After discussing the concept of communicative irony understood in the spirit of Mitchell S. Green’s expressive communication model, we propose to de-velop the Austinian idea of etiolation and show how cases of etiolative use of language parasitize the mechanisms of its serious or ordinary applications. In particular, we argue that echoing and overt pretence are two etiolation techniques that allow the sender to express a negative attitude towards contextually availa-ble mental or linguistic representations. We also show that the proposed model allows the explanation of verbal forms of communicative irony.