Cover not available

Article published In: Pragmatics & Cognition
Vol. 29:1 (2022) ► pp.1–28

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

Ad hoc concepts, affective attitude and epistemic stance

 | Universidad de Sevilla
Published online: 2 February 2023
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/pc.20002.pad
Abstract
In relevance-theoretic pragmatics the lower-level or first-order explicature is a propositional form resulting from a series of inferential developments of the logical form. It amounts to the message the speaker communicates explicitly. The higher-level or second-order explicature is a description of the speech act that the speaker performs, her affective attitude towards what she says or her epistemic stance to the communicated information. Information about the speaker’s affective attitude or epistemic stance need not solely be represented in the latter, though. It could be included as beliefs in the mental files of pragmatically adjusted conceptual representations featuring in lower-level explicatures. Those beliefs would originate as lexical pragmatic processes operate and their representation would be triggered by elements like evaluative morphemes, expressive expletives, insulting terms and evidential participles. Although they may be true or false in their own right, such beliefs would not affect the truth-conditional content of the expressed proposition.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Explicit meaning
  • 3.Lexical adjustment and psychological states
    • 3.1Evaluative morphology and ad hoc concepts
    • 3.2Expressive expletives, ad hoc concepts and psychological states
    • 3.3Offensive terms and lexical pragmatic processes
    • 3.4Evidential participles, lexical pragmatics and belief states
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
References (75)
References
Aikhenvald, Alexandra. 2004. Evidentiality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Allan, Keith. 2015. When is a slur not a slur? The use of nigger in “Pulp fiction”. Language Sciences 521. 187–199. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Archer, Dawn. 2015. Slurs, insults, (backhanded) compliments and other strategic facework moves. Language Sciences 521. 82–97. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Badarneh, Muhammad A. 2010. The pragmatics of diminutives in colloquial Jordanian Arabic. Journal of Pragmatics 42(1). 153–167. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blakemore, Diane. 1987. Semantic constraints on relevance. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2002. Relevance and linguistic meaning: The semantics and pragmatics of discourse markers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011. On the descriptive ineffability of expressive meaning. Journal of Pragmatics 43(14). 3537–3550. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2015. Slurs and expletives: A case against a general account of expressive meaning. Language Sciences 521. 22–35. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Börjars, Kersti & Kate Burridge. 2001. Introducing English grammar. London: Arnold.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bosque, Ignacio. 2009. Nueva gramática de la lengua española. Madrid: Espasa.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brown, Penelope & Stephen C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness. Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Burton-Roberts, Noel. 2005. Robyn Carston on semantics, pragmatics and ‘encoding’. Journal of Linguistics 41(2). 389–407. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Carston, Robyn. 2000. Explicature and semantics. UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 121. 1–44.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2002. Thoughts and utterances: The pragmatic of explicit communication. Oxford: Blackwell. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2009. The explicit/implicit distinction in pragmatics and the limits of explicit communication. International Review of Pragmatics 1(1). 35–62. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2013a. Implicature, explicature, and truth-theoretic semantics. In Maite Ezcurdia & Robert J. Stainton (eds.), The semantics-pragmatics boundary in philosophy, 261–283. Peterborough: Broadview Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2013b. Word meaning, what is said and explicature. In Carlo Penco & Filippo Domaneschi (eds.), What is said and what is not, 175–204. Stanford: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2016. The heterogeneity of procedural meaning. Lingua 175–1761. 154–166. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Carston, Robyn & Alison Hall. 2017. Contextual effects on explicature: Optional pragmatics or optional syntax? International Review of Pragmatics 9(1). 51–81. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clark, Billy. 2016. Relevance theory and language change. Lingua 175/1761. 139–153. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Collins, Peter & Carmella Hollo. 2000. English grammar: An introduction. London: Palgrave.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Croom, Adam M. 2014. The semantics of slurs: A refutation of pure expressivism. Language Sciences 411. 227–242. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Crystal, David. 1991. A dictionary of linguistics and phonetics. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
De Marco, Anna. 1998. The acquisition of diminutives in Italian. Antwerp Papers in Linguistics 951. 199–218.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dendale, Patrick & Liliane Tasmowski. 2001. Introduction: Evidentiality and related notions. Journal of Pragmatics 33(3). 339–348. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dressler, Wolfgang U. & Lavinia Merlini Barbaresi. 2001. Morphopragmatics of diminutives and augmentatives: On the priority of pragmatics over semantics. In István Kenesei & Robert M. Harnish (eds.), Perspectives on semantics, pragmatics, and discourse. Festschrift for Ferenc Kiefer, 43–58. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Greenbaum, Sidney & Randolph Quirk. 1993. A student’s grammar of the English language. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haegeman, Liliane & Jacqueline Guéron. 1999. English grammar: A generative perspective. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hall, Alison. 2017. Lexical pragmatics, explicature and ad hoc concepts. In Ilse Depraetere & Raphael Salkie (eds.), Semantics and pragmatics: Drawing a line, 85–100. Cham: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Huddleston, Rodney. 1988. English grammar: An outline. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ifantidou, Elly. 1992. Sentential adverbs and relevance. UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 41. 193–214.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1993. Parentheticals and relevance. UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 51. 193–210.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2001. Evidentials and relevance. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jary, Mark. 2016. Rethinking explicit utterance content. Journal of Pragmatics 1021. 24–37. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mascaro, Olivier & Dan Sperber. 2009. The moral, epistemic, and mindreading components of children’s vigilance towards deception. Cognition 112(3). 367–380. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Matthews, Peter H. 2007. Oxford concise dictionary of linguistics (2nd edn.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mendoza, Martha. 2005. Polite diminutives in Spanish. A matter of size? In Robin T. Lakoff & Sachiko Ide (eds.), Broadening the horizons of linguistic politeness, 163–173. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Moeschler, Jacques. 2007. The role of explicature in communication and in intercultural communication. In Laurence Horn & Istvan Kecskes (eds.), Explorations in pragmatics: Linguistic, cognitive and intercultural aspects, 73–94. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2017. How speaker meaning, explicature and implicature work together. In Rachel Giora & Michael Haugh (eds.), Doing pragmatics interculturally: Cognitive, philosophical, and sociopragmatic perspectives, 215–232. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nuyts, Jan. 2006. Modality: Overview and linguistic issues. In William Frawley (ed.), The expression of modality, 1–26. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Padilla Cruz, Manuel. 2009. Towards an alternative relevance-theoretic approach to interjections. International Review of Pragmatics 1(1). 182–206. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2013. Understanding and overcoming pragmatic failure in intercultural communication: From focus on speakers to focus on hearers. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching 51(1). 23–54. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2017. Interlocutors-related and hearer-specific causes of misunderstanding: Processing strategy, confirmation bias and weak vigilance. Research in Language 15(1). 11–36. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2018. Expressive APs and expletive NPs revisited: Refining the extant relevance-theoretic procedural account. Lingua 2051. 54–70. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2020. Evidential participles and epistemic vigilance. In Agnieszka Piskorska (ed.), Relevance, figuration and continuity in pragmatics, 69–93. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Piskorska, Agnieszka. 2016. Perlocutionary effects and relevance theory. In Manuel Padilla Cruz (ed.), Relevance theory: Recent developments, current challenges and future directions, 287–305. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Potts, Christopher. 2007a. The expressive dimension. Theoretical Linguistics 33(2). 165–197. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2007b. The centrality of expressive indices. Theoretical Linguistics 33(2). 255–268. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Scott, Kate. 2019. Referring expressions, pragmatics, and style: Reference and beyond. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sifianou, Maria. 1992. The use of diminutive in expressing politeness: Modern Greek versus English. Journal of Pragmatics 17(2). 155–173. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sperber, Dan, Fabrice Clément, Christophe Heintz, Olivier Mascaro, Hugo Mercier, Gloria Origgi & Deirdre Wilson. 2010. Epistemic vigilance. Mind & Language 25(4). 359–393. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sperber, Dan & Deirdre Wilson. 1986. Relevance: Communication and cognition. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1995. Relevance: Communication and cognition (2nd edn.). Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1998. The mapping between the mental and the public lexicon. In Peter Carruthers & Jill Boucher (eds.), Language and thought: Interdisciplinary themes, 184–200. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2015. Beyond speaker’s meaning. Croatian Journal of Philosophy 15(44). 117–149.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wharton, Tim. 2009. Pragmatics and non-verbal communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2016. That bloody so-and-so has retired: Expressives revisited. Lingua 175–1761. 20–35. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wierzbicka, Anna. 1991. Cross-cultural pragmatics: The semantics of human interaction. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wilson, Deirdre. 1999. Metarepresentation in linguistic communication. UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 111. 127–161.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011. The conceptual-procedural distinction: Past, present and future. In Victoria Escandell Vidal, Manuel Leonetti & Aoife Ahern (eds.), Procedural meaning: Problems and perspectives, 3–31. London: Brill. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2012. Modality and the conceptual-procedural distinction. In Ewa Wałaszewska & Agnieszka Piskorska (eds.), Relevance theory: More than understanding, 23–43. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2016. Reassessing the conceptual-procedural distinction. Lingua 175–1761. 5–19. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2017. Relevance theory. In Yan Huang (ed.), The Oxford handbook of pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wilson, Deirdre & Robyn Carston. 2006. Metaphor, relevance and the ‘emergent property’ issue. Mind & Language 21(3). 404–433. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2007. A unitary approach to lexical pragmatics: Relevance, inference and ad hoc concepts. In Noel Burton-Roberts (ed.), Pragmatics, 230–259. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wilson, Deirdre & Dan Sperber. 1993. Linguistic form and relevance. Lingua 90(1). 1–25. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2000. Truthfulness and relevance. UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 121. 215–257.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2002. Relevance theory. UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 141. 249–287.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2004. Relevance theory. In Larry Horn & Gregory Ward (eds.), The handbook of pragmatics, 607–632. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wilson, Deirdre & Tim Wharton. 2006. Relevance and prosody. Journal of Pragmatics 38(10). 1559–1579. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Würstle, Regine. 1992. Überangebot und Defizit in der Wortbildung: Eine kontrastive Studie zur Diminutivbildung im Deutschen, Französischen und Englischen. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Yus Ramos, Francisco. 1999. Misunderstandings and explicit/implicit communication. Pragmatics 9(4). 487–517.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zakowski, Samuel. 2014. Inference and metarepresentations: Ancient Greek ἦ που as a constraint on higher-level explicatures. Journal of Pragmatics 741. 109–128. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

Li, Xin, Yinong Tian, Bin Li, Lili Liu & Yonggang Su
2025. Unmasking Tension: How the Third Party Navigates the Increasing Tension in Triadic Medical Encounters. Health Communication ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Yus, Francisco
2025. Inferring from Emojis: From Propositions to Feelings and Emotions. In Emoji Pragmatics, ► pp. 173 ff. DOI logo
Linares-Bernabéu, Esther
2023. Mediating through question-asking: A sociopragmatic analysis of epistemic stance negotiation in everyday conversation. Journal of Pragmatics 213 ► pp. 49 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 29 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