Abstract
The paper examines the determination of the explicit content of communication via inferential processes based on the speakers’ situational interests. The paper’s argument is based on the hypothesis that the meaning of natural language expressions depends on the situational extra-linguistic interests of speakers. It is maintained that interests affect the sentences of natural language when semantic conventions, semantic context, and pragmatic context are unable to determine a unique meaning for a sentence. In particular, the paper addresses the question of the determination of meaning via inference where the speaker’s interest is a premise for communicative inferences. The notion of interest is viewed as (preference for) a state of affairs which implies the possibility conditions of the agent’s goal. The context of interests is viewed as the set of states of affairs that make a sentence true and contemporaneously satisfy the situational interests of the speaker. The last part of the paper illustrates a real-life case of linguistic dispute.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Bianchi, C.: Pragmatica cognitiva. I meccanismi della comunicazione, Laterza, Roma-Bari (2009)
Kaplan, D.: Demonstratives. An essay on semantics, logic, metaphysics, and epistemology of demonstratives and other indexicals. In: Almong, J., Perry, J., Wettstein, H. (eds.) Themes from Kaplan. Oxford University Press, Oxford (1977/1989)
Kaplan, D.: Afterthoughts. In: Almong, J., Perry, J., Wettstein, H. (eds.) Themes from Kaplan. Oxford University Press, Oxford (1989)
Bianchi, C.: Nobody loves me: quantification in context. Philosophical Studies 130(2), 377–397 (2006)
Perry, J.: Indexical and demonstratives. In: Hale, R., Wright, C. (eds.) Companion to the Philosophy of Language. Blackwell, Oxford (1997)
Bianchi, C.: Pragmatica del linguaggio, Laterza, Bari-Roma (2003)
Clark, H.H.: Arena’s of Language. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago (1992)
Searle, J.: The Background of meaning. In: Searle, J., Kiefer, F., Bierwisch, M. (eds.) Speech Act Theory and Pragmatics. Reidel, Dordrecht (1980)
Tarski, A.: The semantic conception of truth and the foundation of semantics. Philosophical and Phenomenological Research 4, 341–356 (1944)
Conte, R., Castelfranchi, C.: Cognitive and Social Action. University College London, London (1995)
Cruciani, M.: On the notion of intended meaning. In: Ohlsson, S., Catrambone, R. (eds.) Proceedings of the 32th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, pp. 1028–1033. Cognitive Science Society, Austin (2010)
Cruciani, M.: Significato inteso, stati di cose e livello esplicito della comunicazione. Sistemi Intelligenti XXII 3, 505–513 (2010)
Cruciani, M.: Intended meaning and situational interest. In: Taatgen, N., van Rijn, H. (eds.) Proceedings of the 31th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, pp. 2747–2752. Cognitive Science Society, Austin (2009)
Cruciani, M.: Cono del linguaggio, negoziazione degli interessi e significato inteso di clausole contrattuali ambigue. Sistemi Intelligenti XXI 3, 473–488 (2009)
Travis, C.: Saying and Understanding. Blackwell, Oxford (1975)
Travis, C.: The True and False: The Domain of Pragmatics. Benjamins, Amsterdam (1981)
Searle, J.: Expression and Meaning. University Press Cambridge, Cambridge (1979)
Grice, P.: Studies The Way of Words. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1989)
Sperber, D., Wilson, D.: Relevance Theory: Communication and Cognition. Blackwell, Oxford (1986)
Carston, R.: Implicature, explicature and truth-theoretic semantics. In: Kempson, R. (ed.) Mental Representations. Interface Between Language and Reality. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1988)
Carston, R.: Linguistic meaning, communicated meaning and cognitive pragmatics. Mind and Language 17(1-2), 127–148 (2002)
Recanati, F.: The pragmatics of what is said. Mind Language 4(4), 207–232 (1989)
Recanati, F.: Direct Reference: From Language to Thought. Blackwell, Oxford (1993)
Bach, K.: Conversational impliciture. Mind Language 9(2), 124–162 (1994)
Travis, C.: Pragmatics. In: Hale, R., Wright, C. (eds.) A Companion to the Philosophy of Language. Blackwell, Oxford (1997)
Levinson, S.: Presumptive meanings. The theory of generalized conversational implicature. MIT Press, Cambridge (2000)
Bianchi, C.: Semantics and pragmatics: distinction reloaded. In: Bianchi, C. (ed.) The Semantics/pragmatics Distinction. Stanford, Csli (2004)
Hobbs, J.R.: Abduction in Natural Language Understanding. In: Horn, L., Ward, G. (eds.) The Handbook of Pragmatics. Blackwell, Oxford (2004)
Bouquet, P., Giunchiglia, F.: Reasoning about theory adequacy. A new solution to the qualification problem. Fundamenta Informaticae 23, 247–262 (1995)
Giunchiglia, F.: Contextual reasoning. Epistemologia 16, 345–364 (1993)
Bouquet, P.: Contesti e ragionamento contestuale. Il ruolo del contesto in una teoria della rappresentazione della conoscenza. Genova, Pantograf (1998)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Cruciani, M. (2011). Communicative Inferences and Context of Interests. In: Beigl, M., Christiansen, H., Roth-Berghofer, T.R., Kofod-Petersen, A., Coventry, K.R., Schmidtke, H.R. (eds) Modeling and Using Context. CONTEXT 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 6967. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-24279-3_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-24279-3_8
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-24278-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-24279-3
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)