RT list: Degrees of inference?

In the 1980s, John Hinds distinguished between speaker/writer and
listener/reader responsible languages. In the former (e.g. English and
French), the speaker/writer is primarily responsible for effective
communication; in the latter (e.g. Japanese and perhaps Korean) it is the
listener/reader. It is often said that in Japanese what is expressed and
what is intended tend to be two different things; there is no obligation to
give full explanations and clarifications, to be linear and direct, or to
use explicit coherence markers and transitional statements. Consequently
listeners/readers need to rely heavily on inference.

In the 1970s, Edward Hall distinguished between high- and low-context
cultures, giving Japan as an example of a high-context culture in which
people tend to have similar experiences and expectations, allowing many
things to be left unsaid, and inferences to be drawn from implicit shared
cultural knowledge.

The authors of RT come from speaker/writer responsible cultures (the French
even have the deluded saying *ce qui n’est pas clair n’est pas français*!).
Can anyone tell me whether any work has been done on RT and *degrees of
inference* considered to be necessary in different languages/cultures?

Many thanks,

Ian MacKenzie

Faculté de traduction et d’interprétation, Université de Genève

ian.mackenzie@unige.ch

 Recently published:* English as a Lingua Franca: Theorizing and Teaching
English*, Routledge, 2013.
Received on Tue Nov 26 17:08:49 2013