Experimental Pragmatics
The Making of a Cognitive Science

Explains the phenomena, theoretical debates, experiments and historical development of experimental pragmatics, which investigates how utterances communicate a speaker's intended meaning.

Ira Noveck (Author)

9781107446885, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 11 March 2021

280 pages, 22 b/w illus. 6 tables
22.9 x 15.1 x 1.6 cm, 0.42 kg

'This richly illuminating guide by one of the pioneers of experimental pragmatics offers a unique insider's view of the origins, current state and future prospects of the field. Brilliantly enjoyable, accessible and fair-minded.' Deirdre Wilson, University College London

How does a listener understand a sarcastic 'That was a wonderful speech' when the words point to a positive review? Why do students of introductory logic interpret 'Some cabs are yellow' as 'Not all cabs are yellow' when the meaning of 'some' is compatible with 'all'? Pragmatics aims to explain how listeners draw out a speaker's meaning from utterances, an astonishing feat when one considers that the words in a sentence hardly suffice for fully comprehending what the speaker intended. Given the nature of pragmatics, it is going to take the interdisciplinary firepower of many cognitive sciences - including philosophy, experimental psychology, linguistics and neuroscience - to fully appreciate this uniquely human ability. In this book, Ira Noveck, a leading pioneer in experimental pragmatics, engagingly walks the reader through the phenomena, the theoretical debates, the experiments as well as the historical development of this growing academic discipline.

1. Defining pragmatics: the what, the how and areas of disagreement
2. Grice's monumental proposal and reactions to it
3. The experimentalist's mindset
4. A consideration of experimental techniques
5. Early experimental pragmatics
6. How logical terms can be enriched: exposing semantic-pragmatic divergences
7. Grammatical or semantic approaches to scalar implicatures
8. Conditionals
9. Referring
10. Speaking falsely and getting away with it: post-Gricean accounts of metaphor and other lexical adjustments
11. Irony: shifting attention and reading intentions
12. Pragmatic abilities among those with autism
13. More topics for experimental pragmatics: an all you can eat buffet
14. Opinionated conclusions and considerations for the future.

Subject Areas: Semantics, discourse analysis, etc [CFG]