Re: RT list: Degrees of inference?

Now you speak of
"the SIL linguists with knowledge of Africa, and the various Japanese
linguists working in RT. Then again, they tend to analyse specific
particles, connectors, discourse markers, etc., i.e. do /real/ work,
rather than trade in airy generalisations like I do!"

I'd add three points:
1. Procedural meaning came out of RT work, and a number of us are
applying it in analysing those particles &c ... I think with useful
results, particularly in turning up particles in Greek, Hebrew and
African languages that mark a string as metarepresentational.

2. "Trading in airy generalisations" is in fact where the new insights
come, that the detail work can pick up. don't deprecate the theoretical
developments you guys uncover; I don't-- and a reason for speaking to
the issue you raise is the hope for some new thinking.

3. "Ranking languages according to levels of inference, or the use of
implicatures" doesn't hit the spot, though, does it? It would presumably
not be IN the language, but in how it is used for communicating in
different interpersonal contexts, some of which would rely more on
shared assumptions, or if Yoshikawa goes further, some of which pay less
attention to shared assumptions and require audiences to spend more
processing effort than RT suggests. I assume that all communities have
situations in which speaking is deliberately less plain, and, if you are
correct, that some communities spread this across many contexts, and
make the assumption that the audience will make effort to understand.
If that roughly represents the kind of societal contexts you have in
mind, I then want to ask two further questions.

a. How would RT be affected if the "minimal processing effort" side is
weakened? I guess the affect can be tolerated, since all societies do
communicate in situations where more effort is required [by some in the
audience]. It presumably links up with the three strategies in Dan
Sperber's paper /Understanding Verbal Understanding/, which also accepts
audiencescan jack up the effort side.

b. What kind of evidence would be required to show that community A
typically uses language in ways that lay more responsibility on
hearers/readers? Not from less benevolence or to obfuscate
communication, but for some other reason.

Coming back to eastern Africa, yes, I "see" communities that apparently
lay more responsibility on audiences, and do not utter to minimise
processing costs. And, yes, I see literature that requires more
processing. Isn't it the case that much modern English literature is
more open-ended than RT has allowed for?

I'd really like to hear discussion from those in RT who are in a good
position to speak to these questions.

Ronnie

On 27/11/2013 18:08, ian mackenzie wrote:
>
> Thank you, Ronnie Sim.
>
>
> It’s not only the Horn of Africa. John Hinds (1987) quotes
> Yoshikawa(1978) (I can give the refs. to anyone who wants them) saying
> “the basic principle of communication in Japan, the fact that what is
> verbally expressed and what is actually intended are two different
> things, is something that Japanese people are supposed tobe aware of.”
>
>
> S&W do of course argue that language use (in any natural language) is
> almost never literal, and that inference is almost always involved,
> but I’m still surprised that no-one seems to have tried to rank
> languages according to levels of inference, or the use of
> implicatures. Especially with all the SIL linguists with knowledge of
> Africa, and the various Japanese linguists working in RT. Then again,
> they tend to analyse specific particles, connectors, discourse
> markers, etc., i.e. do /real/ work, rather than trade in airy
> generalisations like I do!
>
>
> Ian MacKenzie
>
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 12:48 PM, Ronnie Sim <ronnie_sim@sil.org
> <mailto:ronnie_sim@sil.org>> wrote:
>
> Ian, you asked
> "Can anyone tell me whether any work has been done on RT and
> /degrees of inference/ considered to be necessary in different
> languages/cultures?"
> The short answer from me is a nagative ... but I hope others on
> the RT list will have something more positive.
>
> What I can do is agree on the basis of anecdotal evidence.
> I'd say in Africa generally -- so, at least in the societies I am
> most familiar with, in eastern Africa and the Horn, speaking
> directly is not the norm. People tend to talk indirectly about
> issues, and rely on the audience doing a lot of inferencing to
> keep track of what is intended. The more serious the issue is, the
> more care there is in not speaking to it directly. So the western
> "value" of being up front with what is on our mind is not
> appreciated, not valued, and may be read as insensitive. Put like
> that, I can also see indirectness, and consequent reliance on
> inferencing, at work in western societies in at least some aspects
> of life.
>
> Secondly, especially in the Horn of Africa, it seems to me that
> explanation [whenever called for] is achieved via the presentation
> of analogies -- 'parables' if you like. A asks a question about
> something that is not clear, and B responds by offering an
> analogy. A has to inference in what way the analogy fits. Again,
> the west does this, and some tropes depend on analogy, but in the
> Horn, in some societies at least, it is an art form--a genre,
> almost. Sometimes the analogy might be fairly 'narrow' and be
> interpretable in terms of one [or two] quite strong implicatures.
> At other times, it seems to depend on a range of weak
> implicatures, no one of which is consciously 'intended'. Again
> certain [traditional?] negotiations in the west may show similar
> signs. I think of negotiations that used to involve two families
> arranging a marriage between one of 'our sons' and one of 'their
> daughters'. And analogy and indirectness is the means of carrying
> it out. some time ago now, I heard this done in terms of a young
> man wishing to harbour his boat, so it can be quite raucous and baudy.
>
> Is indirectness something that surfaces in all societies, in some
> communication, and then, along the lines of your question, do some
> societies prefer indirectness, and a consequent greater dependence
> on inferencing?
>
> Anthropologist Mary Douglas set up two parameters for
> understanding societal behaviour -- Group and Grid. The Group
> parameter involves the bondedness among members of the group; the
> grid parameter involves stratification of tasks/roles among group
> members. Low Group/Low Grid would be individualist; High
> group/High grid is hierarchical societies; High group/Low grid is
> egalitarian; Low group/High grid is fatalist. The epitomising
> terms are extremes; most societies presumably show trends not
> extremes.
>
> Communication in different Group/Grid societies might reasonably
> be predicted to show differences brought about by such cultural
> factors.
>
> There is a correlation between the Group/Grid concept and the
> concept of high/low Context. Plausibly, communication in high
> shared context situations relies more heavily on inferencing.
>
> I would like to hear from others who have explored more
> systematically these cultural aspects in which communication takes
> place. Which is my main reason for saying anything at all, no
> matter how little! I assume that the work of Helen Spencer-Oatey,
> Stells Ting-Toomey and those who are associated with the same
> interests could give us much more.
>
> Ronnie [Sim]
>
>
>
>
> On 26/11/2013 17:07, ian mackenzie wrote:
>>
>> 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 <mailto:ian.mackenzie@unige.ch>
>>
>>
>> Recently published:/English as a Lingua Franca: Theorizing and
>> Teaching English/, Routledge, 2013.
>
>
Received on Thu Nov 28 10:20:14 2013