Jacques Moeschler

This article is about truth and relevance. It first discusses the concept of truth in formal semantics and pragmatics, mainly the Gricean, neo-Gricean and post-Gricean approaches to meaning. What is particularly crucial is the relationship between pragmatic meaning and truth, since, from a Gricean perspective, meaning is defined as non-truth-conditional, which in turn raises the question of how truth can be a pragmatic issue. A second issue is the relationship between truth and relevance, as developed in relevance theory. A third key point is how truth matters as regards the common ground. In order to illustrate how truth is connected to the common ground, bullshit, post-truth, fake news and lies are discussed, which raise the issue of how truth can be defeated in verbal communication, and mainly how false assumptions can be entertained as true.

This article is about truth and relevance. It first discusses the concept of truth in formal semantics and pragmatics, mainly the Gricean, neo-Gricean and post-Gricean approaches to meaning. What is particularly crucial is the relationship between pragmatic meaning and truth, since, from a Gricean perspective, meaning is defined as non-truth-conditional, which in turn raises the question of how truth can be a pragmatic issue. A second issue is the relationship between truth and relevance, as developed in relevance theory. A third key point is how truth matters as regards the common ground. In order to illustrate how truth is connected to the common ground,bullshit, post-truth, fake newsandliesare discussed, which raise the issue of how truth can be defeated in verbal communication, and mainly how false assumptions can be entertained as true.

The semantics-pragmatics interface issue appeared at the beginning of the Gricean turn, based on the concepts of non-natural meaning and implicature. The main issue is the criteria defining linguistic meaning from intended speaker’s meaning. In this article, we give empirical arguments enlightening the complexity of the semantics-pragmatics interface, as generalized conversational implicatures, explicatures, or the relation between truth-conditions and pragmatic meaning. We mainly discuss four types of content, semantic (entailment, presupposition) and pragmatic (explicature, implicature) ones, by showing that the explicitness and negation criteria give a first answer to the semantics-pragmatics interface issue. Additional criteria (truth-conditionality, speaker’s commitment, context, implicitness) give a precise picture of the complexity of linguistic and pragmatic meanings, originating the conceptual and procedural meaning distinction (Moeschler 2016a) and explaining the sinuous shape of the semantics-pragmatics border (Moeschler to appear).

For more than thirty years, semantics and pragmatics have benefitted from descriptive studies on discourse connectives, the argumentative function of which has been recognized in different theoretical frameworks: theory of linguistic argumentation (Ducrot et al. in Les mots du discours. Minuit, Paris, 1980), Relevance Theory (Blakemore in Semantic constraints on relevance. Blackwell, Oxford, 1987; Carston in Thoughts and utterances: the pragmatics of explicit communication. Blackwell, Oxford, 2002), cognitive semantics (Sanders and Nordmann in Discourse Processes 29(1):37–60, 2000), Rhetorical Structure Theory (Taboada in Journal of Pragmatics 38(4):567–592, 2006). However, an issue has not been deeply investigated: What is the difference between discourses with and without connectives? In this chapter, I raise the issue of the function of connectives in discourse, the different ways of defining connectives, the paradox that cognitive approaches to connectives give rise to, the role of mais in argumentation, and the issue of the contribution of connectives to argumentation. In the analysis I show how the contrast between sequences with and without connectives can be thought in a more general framework: argumentation sequences with connectives are more efficient because they make argumentation relations explicit, and have as side effects the minimization of processing costs and the maximizing of relevance; moreover, they are stronger because connectives introduce new focal information, which has more contextual implications than a non-focal one.

An accessible and thorough introduction to implicatures, a key topic in all frameworks of pragmatics. Starting with a definition of the various types of implicatures in Gricean, neo-Gricean and post-Gricean pragmatics, the book covers many important questions for current pragmatic theories, namely: the distinction between explicit and implicit forms of pragmatic enrichment, the criteria for drawing a line between semantic and pragmatic meaning, the relations between the structure of language and its use, the social and cognitive factors underlying the use of implicatures by native speakers, and the factors influencing their acquisition for children and second language learners. Written in non-technical language, Implicatures will appeal to students and teachers in linguistics, applied linguistics, psychology and sociology, who are interested in how language is used for communication, and how children and learners develop pragmatic skills.

La question de l’interface sémantique-pragmatique est apparue dès le début du tournant gricéen, fondé sur les concepts de signification non naturelle et d’implicature. La question cruciale est devenue celle des critères permettant de définir la signification linguistique et le sens intentionné du locuteur. Dans cet article, nous montrerons quels sont les arguments empiriques qui illustrent la complexité de l’interface sémantique-pragmatique, comme les implicatures conversationnelles généralisées, les explicatures, ou encore la relation entre conditions de vérité et sens pragmatique. Nous discuterons principalement de quatre types de contenus, sémantiques et pragmatiques, en montrant que les critères de l’explicitation et de la négation donnent une première réponse à la question de l’interface sémantique-pragmatique. Des critères supplémentaires permettent de donner une image précise de la complexité de la signification, linguistique et pragmatique, à l’origine de la différence entre la signification conceptuelle et procédurale, mais aussi de la frontière sinueuse sémantique-pragmatique.

This paper is an attempt to give a general explanation of pragmatic aspects of linguistic negation. After a brief survey of classical accounts of negation within pragmatic theories (as speech act theory, argumentation theory and polyphonic theory), the main pragmatic uses of negation (illocutionary negation, external negation, lowering and majoring negation) are discussed within relevance theory. The question of the relevance of negative utterance is raised, and a general inferential schema (based on the so-called invited inference) is proposed and tested for the main uses of negation discussed in the paper.

This article is concerned with pragmatic connectives and their uses in discursive argumentation. Three approaches to pragmatic connectives will be presented: (1) argumentation theory, which implies a conception of pragmatics integrated within semantics, and a specific type of argumentative rules, called ‘topoi’; (2) discourse structure theory, which associates a function in the structuring of discourse sequences to pragmatic connectives; (3) relevance theory, which constitutes a cognitive pragmatic theory, in which no specific principle is associated to linguistic items. However, two main functions to pragmatic connectives can be proposed: the facilitation of inferences, and the access to relevance. The final purpose of this article is to indicate how argumentative effects in discourse can be explained in a cognitively-based pragmatic theory