Cover not available

In:Pragmatics and Literature
Edited by Siobhan Chapman and Billy Clark
[Linguistic Approaches to Literature 35] 2019
► pp. 139–164

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload Book EPUB
authorization required

Chapter 7
“Lazy reading” and “half-formed things”

Indeterminacy and responses to Eimear McBride’s A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing

Published online: 5 December 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/lal.35.07cla
Article outline
  • 7.1Introduction
  • 7.2A Girl is a Half-formed Thing
  • 7.3Pragmatics and indeterminacy
    • 7.3.1Explicatures and implicatures
    • 7.3.2Open-endedness and spontaneousness
    • 7.3.3“Manifestness”
  • 7.4“Lazy” readings and other responses
  • 7.5Accounting for varying responses
    • 7.5.1Explicit content
    • 7.5.2Implicatures
    • 7.5.3Spontaneousness
    • 7.5.4Open-endedness
    • 7.5.5Characterising readers and readings
  • 7.6Summary
  • Notes
  • References
References (27)
References
Armstrong, Isobel (1995). Textual harassment: the ideology of reading, or how close is close? Textual Practice 9.3, 401–420. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Carston, Robyn (2002). Thoughts and utterances. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clark, Billy (1996). Stylistics and relevance theory. Language and Literature 5.3, 163–178. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2009). Salient inferences: pragmatics and The Inheritors. Language and Literature 18.2, 173–213. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2014). Before, during and after Chekhov: Inference, literary interpretation and literary value. In Siobhan Chapman and Billy Clark (Eds.) Pragmatic literary stylistics, pp. 55–69, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Collard, David (2016). About a girl: a reader’s guide to Eimear McBride’s A Girl Is A Half-formed Thing. London: CB Editions.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dostoevsky, Fyodor (1994, originally published in instalments 1866). Crime and Punishment, translated by Constance Garnett. Ware: Wordsworth Classics New Edition.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Durant, Alan (1984). Conditions of music. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1998). Exploring inferences prompted by reading a very short story. Perspectives: Journal of TESOL Italy XXIV.1, pp. 45–55.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Enright, Anne (2013). A Girl is a Half-formed Thing by Eimear McBride – review. The Guardian, 20 September 2013. Available at: [URL]Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fetterley, Judith (1978). The resisting reader: A feminist approach to American fiction. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Furlong, Anne (1996). Relevance theory and literary interpretation. London: PhD. Thesis, University College London.
(2007). A modest proposal: linguistics and literary studies. Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics 10.3, pp. 325–347.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2011). The soul of wit: a relevance-theoretic discussion. Language and Literature 20.2, pp. 136–150. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grice, H. Paul (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole and J. Morgan (eds.) Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts. Academic Press, New York: 41–58. Reprinted in Grice, H. P. (1989) Studies in the way of words, pp. 86–116, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heaney, Seamus (1966). Death of a Naturalist. London: Faber and Faber.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Leech, Geoffrey and Mick Short (1981). Style in fiction. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McBride, Eimear (2013). A Girl is a Half-formed Thing. Norwich: Galley Beggar Press. Republished 2013, London: Faber and Faber.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
North, Joseph (2017). Literary criticism: A concise political history. Cambridge MA.: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pilkington, Adrian (1992). Poetic effects. Lingua 87.1, pp. 29–51. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2000). Poetic effects. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sperber, Dan and Deirdre Wilson (1986). Relevance: Communication and cognition. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. (2nd edition 1995).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2015). Beyond speaker meaning. Croatian Journal of Philosophy XV.44, pp. 117–149.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wilson, Deirdre (2018). Relevance theory and literary interpretation. In Terence Cave and Deirdre Wilson (Eds.) Reading beyond the code: Literature and relevance theory, pp. 185–204, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wilson, Deirdre and Dan Sperber (1981). On Grice’s theory of conversation. In Paul Werth (Ed.) Conversation and discourse, pp. 155–178, London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2004). Relevance theory. In Horn, L. R. and Ward, G. (Eds.), Handbook of pragmatics, pp. 607–632, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wood, James (2014). Useless prayers: Eimear McBride’s A Girl Is A Half-formed Thing. New Yorker, September 29, 2014. Available at: [URL]Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Statham, Simon
2020. The year’s work in stylistics 2019. Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 29:4 ► pp. 454 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 25 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue