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Article published In: New Perspectives on Utterance Interpretation and Implicit Contents
Edited by Daniela Rossi and Nicolas Ruytenbeek
[Belgian Journal of Linguistics 28] 2014
► pp. 19–44

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Is a general theory of utterance interpretation really possible?

 | University of California, Santa Cruz
Published online: 28 November 2014
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/bjl.28.02gib
How realistic is it to assume that psychologists, linguists, philosophers and others may someday be able to construct a general theory of utterance interpretation? Over the past 50 years, scholars have uncovered a tremendous amount about the processes and products of human language understanding. We have proposed a huge assortment of theories to explain how very specific types of utterances may be interpreted (e.g., syntactically ambiguous expressions, figurative language, pragmatic implicatures), with some of us working hard to articulate more comprehensive theories that could be applicable to all aspects of utterance interpretation. Yet the empirical data reveals many complexities that, on the surface, make some doubt whether a general theory of utterance interpretation is a feasible possibility. This paper describes some of these complexities in the empirical literature, focusing on figurative language use. I go on to argue that language scholars must embrace the diverse ways that people use and understand utterances and suggest concrete steps that we all should take if we are to one day find a more general theory, one which is perhaps tied to how people engage in any intentional action.
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Cited by (5)

Cited by five other publications

Gibbs, Raymond W.
2023. Pragmatic complexity in metaphor interpretation. Cognition 237 ► pp. 105455 ff. DOI logo
Gibbs, Raymond W.
2023. What’s figurative about figurative language?. Lingua 287 ► pp. 103520 ff. DOI logo
Degand, Liesbeth & Ludivine Crible
2021. Discourse markers at the peripheries of syntax, intonation and turns. In Pragmatic Markers and Peripheries [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 325], ► pp. 19 ff. DOI logo
Ruytenbeek, Nicolas
2017. The Comprehension of Indirect Requests: Previous Work and Future Directions. In Semantics and Pragmatics: Drawing a Line [Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning, 11], ► pp. 293 ff. DOI logo
Ruytenbeek, Nicolas
2023. Directives (with a special emphasis on requests). In Handbook of Pragmatics [Handbook of Pragmatics, ], ► pp. 67 ff. DOI logo

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