Paola Pennisi

Recently, a part of research in pragmatics has been focused on neuropragmatics. Is it a classic case of neuromania as the ones described by Legrenzi et al. (2014), or is it useful for understanding pragmatics? In this paper, we will try to answer this question. Since we believe Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and schizophrenia represent the most vital core of neuropragmatics, neurolinguistics, and clinical pragmatics research (Bambini, Italian Journal of Linguistics 22:1, 2010; Cummings, Clinical pragmatics, Cambridge University Press, 2009; Cummings, Research in Clinical Pragmatics, Springer, 2017), we will review and discuss the neuropragmatic literature on these clinical cases. We will argue that the attempts of linking cerebral activations to pragmatics inferences can be equivocal: similar observations have been frequently raised about the neuroimaging studies (Pennisi, Il linguaggio dell’autismo, Il Mulino, 2016a; Uttal (2001). The new phrenology: the limits of localizing cognitive processes in the brain. The MIT Press.; Van Orden & Paap, 1997). Therefore, we will discuss the philosophical implications of the recent debate on the role of the temporo-parietal junction in the Theory of Mind (ToM). Some scholars in fact hypothesized that humans usually exercise a sort of mental state integration through inferential processes that are specific for mental phenomena (Saxe & Baron-Cohen, 2006) and that probably this ability is damaged in patients with ASD (Charman & Baron-Cohen, 1992; Leslie & Thaiss, 1992; Pennisi P (2016b). Inferential abilities and pragmatic deficits in subjects with Autism Spectrum Disorders. In Pragmemes and Theories of Language Use (pp. 749–768). Springer, Cham.) and schizophrenia (Lee et al., Social Neuroscience 6:569–581, 2011). This idea is much debated: the only way to clarify the problem would be to identify brain areas for mental state integrations (Stone & Gerrans, 2006); some researchers claim that these areas could be in temporo-parietal junction (Perner et al., Social Neuroscience 1:245–258, 2006). We will show that an approach to the neuropragmatics and/or neurolinguistics literature that also considers the philosophical-psychopathological perspective can allow the understanding of the speech of subjects with ASD and schizophrenia. Although the neuropragmatics studies frequently consider that schizophrenic subjects are unable to be ironic, sarcastic or have difficulties in figurative language, the cases of schizophrenic schizophasia, the letters written by the patients or their poetic productions, show that this is not always the case. Probably, in psychotic language cases, the problem is to consider schizophrenia without its delusional-hallucinatory context. So, it seems necessary to us that neuropragmatics and clinical pragmatics need to consider the schizophrenic context: therefore, also of delusion and hallucinations. Also considering the role of the Executive Functions (EF), of ToM or of so-called “domains of language,” if this does not happen there is the risk of losing the sense of schizophrenic speech, and more in general, the sense of the study of cognitive and linguistic context (Bucca, Capone et al. García-Carpintero et al. Falzone (eds), Indirect Reports and Pragmatics in the World Languages, Springer, 2018; Bucca, A. (2020). Il discorso schizofrenico. Verbigerazione, fraintendimenti, fallimenti comunicativi. Reti, saperi, linguaggi, 9(18), 2, 365–380). We recognize the efficacy of neurolinguistics, neuropragmatics, and clinical pragmatics studies, however, we think that these perspectives must be integrated with the philosophical and psychopathological perspective of the cognitive research on language.

In this paper I will discuss a key concept in philosophy of language, the one of performativity, which has evolved accordingly to the process of change that cognitive science went through over the last decades due to the influence of the embodied approaches to cognition. The discussion starts with a summary of the many definitions of performativity and goes on with the analysis of the consequences that such differences had on the characterization of “happiness” and “unhappiness” of performative acts. Then I have tried to show how the performativity of a linguistic behavior might be “happy” in the context of a second language acquisition and, conversely, how dysfunctional performative acts can be “unhappy” and lead to psychopathological behaviors, such as eating disorders.

A relatively new discipline is being born. Clinical pragmatics is a new research field mainly dedicated to investigate cognitive underpinnings of pragmatics, using as a starting point of investigations the alterations showed by patients in which pragmatics is, in such a way, altered.Is this field of research promising? If so, for what specifically? How could this discipline be developed in the future for better results?In order to answer this question, in this study, I review the state of the art of clinical pragmatics through Louise Cummings’s Research in Clinical Pragmatics, that collects the best recent developments of the discipline taken on from the world’s most expert researchers in the field. I analysed in detail and analytically discussed and organized all the essays considered. Finally I discussed challenges for methodology and I suggested some guidelines for future researches in this field.My review shows that today we dispose a lot of scientific data in clinical pragmatics, but we need to collect other data and above all to theoretically reflect specifically on the following topics: the typical development of Theory of Mind (ToM), social knowledge, executive functions, the relation between executive functions and ToM, reference, presupposition, conversational implicatures, the method to measure pragmatics skills, aetiology of pragmatic behaviours, cognitive profile of patients with pragmatic alterations, developmental aspects of pragmatics, longitudinal development of pragmatics in typical and a-typical subjects, efficacy of interventions, evaluation of impact of pragmatic disorders in patients’ life, patients’ pragmatic strengths, the impact of transcultural differences in pragmatic skills, philosophical investigations on the possibility to translate classical pragmatic concepts into quantitative measurement, pragmatic performances of bilingual subjects.Clinical pragmatics is a research area which is booming. It is a territory which is still little explored where the interdisciplinary meeting (typical of cognitive sciences approach) between pragmatics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, neuroscience and linguistics promises the processing of prolific philosophical theories and a deeper understanding of some of the most widespread diseases in the world, such as autism or Parkinson’s. In this direction Research in Clinical Pragmatics is a good example of how to prolifically investigate in clinical pragmatics.

One of the roles of philosophy in the age of the third generation of cognitive scientists is to integrate data and theories from many different research fields.The second step is to integrate them into the development of more general theoretical backgrounds in order to evaluate if the latter seems to be prolific for human thought. Recently, thanks to clinical pragmatics studies, we have a growing corpus of empirical data regarding pragmatic anomalies of subjects with autism.In this study I will try to show the limits of the explanation of linguistic and pragmatic alterations in subjects with autism as a consequence of their deficit in Theory of Mind and I will try to show the advantages of a more holistic cognitive background such as that of Embodied Cognition theories.My main focus will be on alterations regarding the fixation of personal reference in subjects with autism. I will analyse some studies conducted on typical subjects that investigate the embodiment processes at various levels during the use of personal reference. After, I will critically discuss some studies regarding the anomalies in the use of personal references in subjects with autism. Finally I will compare three kinds of explanations for the phenomenon: the echolalic one; the one regarding the deficit in ToM and a third one, proposed by me, that links these alterations to the higher level of performativity required by the fixation of personal reference in subjects with anomalies in the embodiment system, which seems to be the case for patients with autism.This last thesis seems to take into account the complexity of situations in which subjects with autism show anomalies in the fixation of personal reference more than the two others considered. It, in fact, considers both the deficit in ToM and the deficit in executive functions and moreover, in doing that, it maintains a strong ecological perspective.This study suggests that the fixation of personal reference in subjects with autism could receive some very useful theoretical tools from EC theories to be explained and understood.

In this paper, after outlining the general problem of the pragmatics of indirect reports, we dwell on two notoriously thorny problems: a) how do we interpret the pronominals contained in that-clauses of indirect reports; b) how do we interpret the presuppositions of that-clauses of indirect reports?. Theoretical considerations lead us in the direction of the idea that if two pragmatic principles clash, one should give way, but since we do not know which one has to give way, we should be prepared to accept that the strongest or highest-ranking principle will defeat the other. Here we encounter a Principle, which Capone brought our attention to, that is not usually discussed in pragmatic theories, but which seems to play a crucial role, at least sometimes:Do not expect the hearers and the speakers to do what is not possible for them to do. In this paper, we recognize that the problem of opacity is connected with the problem of voices: who is responsible for a given section of the utterance. Given the presence of polyphony, this problem can be resolved either through contextual clues or through pragmatic principles. We prefer to see the interplay of principles and contextual clues as one in which the interpretation process is pretty orderly, with general principles providing the defaults, while contextual clues occasionally defeat the defaults in certain problematic cases. However, the issue of responsibility, which we try to regiment through the Paraphrasis/Form-style principle, does not only concern the issue of opacity but also the issue of how to find a referent for indexical expressions contained in the that-clause of a report and and how to satisfy the presuppositions of the that-clause. In this case the Paraphrasis/Form-style Principle makes wrong predictions, which have to be rectified thanks to a different principle. The pragmatic theory we apply certainly needs some flexibility, but a flexibility which is not injected into the theory by a mechanical ordering of the rules, but by explaining why a certain principle takes precedence over another in terms of considerations of rationality.