RT list: answering Dr. Guijarro

Dear Jose Luis Guijarro,

Pragmatics, at least the pragmatics that subscribers to this list typically find
appealing, is about explaining how people fill the gap between what is coded and
what is communicated with the aid of contextual information (or, as Yule puts
it, it is about explaining "how more gets communicated than said"). Although the
human inferential system that turns schematic logical forms into meaningful and
relevant interpretations is universal, there are cultural constraints that need
to be taken into account when studying specific communicative phenomena.

For example in the forthcoming Madrid Conference Jose Mateo and I will be
delivering a paper on the (intercultural) pragmatics of insults, and we claim
that any pragmatic analysis of insults should be culture-connoted and such
analysis involves answering questions such as the following:

-Are innovative utterances of an insult transferrable to other cultures?
-Do similar contexts of interpretation favour good intention ascription in both
cultures?
-Are any of the possible intentions involved in the use of an insult (offense,
praise, social bond) favoured by cultural constraints? Is any of them expected?
-Does the cultural context play any part in the good or bad understanding of an
insult?
-Do insults in another culture result in a re-contextualisation that affects
understanding?
-Is a reaction to the insult (or lack of it) expected in a specific culture and
perhaps not in others?
-Is there a cultural specificity in the way insults are reacted upon?

These are questions that pragmatics should address but, at the same time, they
possess an inter-cultural connotation, which makes the label of "intercultural
pragmatics" more than suitable.

Best

Francisco Yus
Received on Thu Oct 7 16:06:37 2010