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Article published In: Concepts and Context in Relevance-Theoretic Pragmatics: New Developments
Edited by Agnieszka Piskorska and Manuel Padilla Cruz
[Pragmatics 33:3] 2023
► pp. 324–342

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Ad hoc concepts and the relevance heuristics

A false paradox?

 | University of Paris 8
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 7 November 2022
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https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.21057.lec
Abstract
The idea that interpreting a lexeme typically involves a context-dependent process of meaning construction has in recent years become common ground in linguistic theory. This view is very explicit in relevance theory (. 1995. Relevance: Communication and Cognition. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), which posits that speakers systematically infer ad hoc concepts (Carston, Robyn. 2002. Thoughts and Utterances: The Pragmatics of Explicit Communication. Oxford: Blackwell. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Such an approach raises theoretical issues, though. First, it directly poses a challenge for the exact nature of (and difference between) concepts and ad hoc concepts (Carston, Robyn. 2002. Thoughts and Utterances: The Pragmatics of Explicit Communication. Oxford: Blackwell. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, 249). In addition, as Wilson (. 2011. “The Conceptual-Procedural Distinction: Past, Present and Future.” In Procedural Meaning: Problems and Perspectives, ed. by Victoria Escandell-Vidal, Manuel Leonetti, and Aoife Ahern, 3–31. Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, . 2016. “Reassessing the Conceptual-Procedural Distinction.” Lingua 1751: 5–19. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) and Carston (. 2013. “Word Meaning, What Is Said and Explicature.” In What Is Said and What Is Not, ed. by Carolo Penco, and Filippo Domaneschi, 175–203. Stanford: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, . 2016. “The Heterogeneity of Procedural Meaning.” Lingua 1751: 154–166. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) point out, this view also uncovers the following paradox: if speakers are assumed to follow a path of least effort (relevance heuristics), why should they so systematically infer ad hoc concepts rather than test the encoded concept first? The aim of this paper is to reflect on this theoretical puzzle. It will first be argued that the hypotheses formulated both by Wilson and by Carston seem rather post hoc and fail to fully resolve the apparent paradox. Attention will then be given to the assumed nature of (ad hoc) concepts to show that the problem can be resolved when an alternative (non-atomic) view of concepts in terms of meaning potential is adopted.
Article outline
  • 1.Background and aim
  • 2.Dealing with the paradox
    • 2.1Wilson’s (2011, 2016) procedural account
    • 2.2Carston’s (2013, 2016) underspecification account
  • 3.Resolving the paradox: Concepts and meaning potential
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
References (58)
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