The Pragmatics of Commitment / / Kira Boulat.

• Superior document: Sciences pour la communication ; 132
• VerfasserIn: Boulat, Kira,
• Place / Publishing House: Bern : : Peter Lang International Academic Publishers,, 2023.
• Year of Publication: 2023
• Language: English
• Series: Sciences pour la communication ; 132.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (274 pages).

Commitment is connected to central linguistic features, such as modality and evidentiality. It has thus been investigated in many branches of the field. Building upon this heterogeneous literature, this book offers a cognitive pragmatic account of the processes involved in utterance interpretation, crucially when the hearer assesses the level of commitment linked to it. This research illustrates that the relevance-theoretic notion of strength can be used to capture the cognitive effects of commitment markers (as I think that X, I am sure that X, etc.). The author's model is based on a novel typology as well as predictions which were experimentally tested. The results show that commitment to an utterance is indeed cognitively determined by the strength of the hearer's corresponding assumptions.

Table of Contents

Table of contents -- List of Tables and Figures xi -- Acknowledgements xiii -- General introduction xv -- Part I Commitment: A literature review -- 1 Enunciation Theory and Linguistic Polyphony 3 -- 1.1 Introduction 3 -- 1.2 Enunciation Theory 4 -- 1.2.1 Enunciation Theory and endorsement 5 -- 1.3 Linguistic polyphony 8 -- 1.3.1 Ducrot's (1984) linguistic polyphony 9 -- 1.3.2 The ScaPoLine: Linguistic polyphony and responsibility 12 -- 1.4 Conclusion 15 -- 2 Speech Act Theory 17 -- 2.1 Introduction 17 -- 2.2 Definitions of commitment in Speech Act Theory 19 -- 2.3 Speech acts and commitment 20 -- 2.3.1 Commissives 21 -- 2.3.2 Assertives 22 -- 2.3.3 Directives 25 -- 2.4 Illocutionary-force indicators and commitment 26 -- 2.5 Conclusion 28 -- 3 Studies on dialogue and argumentation 33 -- 3.1 Introduction 33 -- 3.2 Approaches and definitions of commitment 34 -- 3.2.1 Hamblin 34 -- 3.2.2 Walton 37 -- 3.2.3 Beyssade and Marandin 39 -- 3.2.4 Gunlogson 40 -- 3.2.5 Malamud and Stephenson 43 -- 3.2.6 Becker 45 -- 3.3 Conclusion 47 -- 4 Relevance Theory 51 -- 4.1 Introduction 51 -- 4.2 Relevance Theory 51 -- 4.2.1 Relevance and cognition 52 -- 4.2.2 Relevance and communication 54 -- 4.3 Relevance-theoretic approaches to commitment 60 -- 4.3.1 Indirect approaches: Assertion 61 -- 4.3.2 Indirect approaches: Modality and evidentiality 64 -- 4.3.2.1 Epistemic modality 64 -- 4.3.2.2 Evidentiality 69 -- 4.3.3 Direct approaches 75 -- 4.4 Conclusion 79 -- 5 Commitment in linguistics: A summary 83 -- 5.1 Literature on commitment 83 -- 5.2 Remaining questions 84 -- 5.3 The need for a unified account of commitment 85 -- Part II A new take on commitment -- 6 Modelling commitment 89 -- 6.1 Introduction 89 -- 6.2 A hearer-oriented approach 90 -- 6.3 Focusing on explicatures: A graded conception 90 -- 6.4 A relevance-theoretic perspective 92 -- 6.4.1 Higher-level explicatures 94 -- 6.4.2 Strength of assumptions 97 -- 6.5 Epistemic vigilance 108 -- 6.5.1 Graded mechanisms 109 -- 6.5.2 Understanding and believing 109 -- 6.5.3 Epistemic vigilance and the relevance-guided -- comprehension procedure 112 -- 6.5.4 Vigilance towards the content 113 -- 6.5.5 Vigilance towards the source of information 118 -- 6.5.6 Concluding remarks 119 -- 6.6 An alternative account of commitment 120 -- 6.7 A commitment typology 123 -- 6.8 Conclusion 126 -- 7 Theoretical predictions of the model 129 -- 7.1 Introduction 129 -- 7.2 Linguistic markers of certainty 129 -- 7.2.1 Plain assertions, epistemic modals and evidential expressions 130 -- 7.2.2 Experimental literature on linguistic markers of certainty 134 -- 7.2.3 Prediction 139 -- 7.3 The source of information's reliability 141 -- 7.3.1 Competence and benevolence 142 -- 7.3.2 Reported speech and the ad verecundiam fallacy 146 -- 7.3.3 Experimental literature on the source of information's perceived reliability 149 -- 7.3.4 Prediction 154 -- 7.4 The salience of the piece of information 158 -- 7.4.1 Manifestness, accessibility and salience 159 -- 7.4.2 The linguistic literature on salience 160 -- 7.4.3 An alternative definition of salience 161 -- 7.4.4 Experimental literature on salience 166 -- 7.4.5 Prediction 168 -- 7.5 Conclusion 170 -- Part III Testing a new model of commitment -- 8 Experimental pragmatics and memory tasks 173 -- 8.1 Experimental pragmatics 173 -- 8.2 Literature review on memory tasks 174 -- 8.2.1 Memory 174 -- 8.2.2 Remembering and memory tasks 175 -- 8.2.3 Recall and recognition paradigms: A survey 176 -- 8.3 Linguistic phenomena affecting recall and recognition 178 -- 8.4 Conclusion 181 -- 9 Three experimental studies 185 -- 9.1 Linguistic markers of certainty 185 -- 9.1.1 Study 1a 185 -- 9.1.2 Study 1b 191 -- 9.2 The source of information 194 -- 9.2.1 Study 2a 194 -- 9.2.2 Study 2b 197 -- 9.2.3 Study 2c 200 -- 9.3 The salience of the piece of information 204 -- 9.3.1 Study 3a 204 -- 9.3.2 Study 3b 207 -- 9.4 Conclusion 209 -- 10 General discussion 211 -- 10.1 Commitment from a pragmatic perspective 211 -- 10.2 Commitment from a cognitive perspective 213 -- 10.3 Commitment from an experimental perspective 214 -- 10.4 Three predictions about commitment 215 -- 10.5 The results of the three recognition studies 216 -- 10.6 Conclusion 219 -- General conclusion 221 -- References 227.