“What are you saying he implied?”

Inferring commitment from reported speech

Patrick Morency, Steve Oswald and Louis de Saussure

University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland

Commitment and pragmatics

Two main approaches to the notion of commitment: Speech act theory (following Searle 1969):

commitment concerns illocutionary force Cognitive pragmatics (Sperber & Wilson [1986]

1995; Carston 2000, 2002): commitment as a criterion for explicit contents

Commitment as the result of an inference drawn by the hearer (H)

Commitment in reported speech

Commitment as an inference

Commitment is an assumption about the speaker’s (S) endorsement (or non-endorsement) of a content: “commitment refers to what the speaker can be said to

have ‘taken for granted’ in making his or her utterance” (Dascal 2003: 160)

that from which S cannot retract her/himself that which is evident, obvious, manifest, to the hearer H

But in fact it might be more complex

Inferring commitment is: inferring that S holds P to be true derived pragmatically on the basis of the linguistic stimulus

Commitment and the explicit/implicit distinction S can communicate P (a content), and her/his

commitment to P at the same time explicit contents

S can also communicate contents about which s/he does not communicate her/his commitment implicit contents

This is the heuristic basis for the traditional explicit/implicit content distinction defeasibility criterion of implicatures (cf. Grice) logical criterion: there should be no contradictory

information in an utterance

Current issues regarding the explicit/implicit distinction Many components of explicit meaning (i.e. which

suppose speaker’s commitment) are left unexpressed by the speaker ellipsis of logical forms other types of unarticulated constituents (Perry 1986) such

as hidden indexicals (Recanati 2000) “It’s raining” (‘here’ and ‘now’)

Examples (Carston 2000, 2002): Paracetamol is better [than what?] Mary gave John a pen and he wrote down the address

[and then]

Commitment in indirect reported speech Reported speech involves a high degree of

complexity 2 speech instances – original speaker (OS) and reporting

speaker (RS) Who commits to which content?

as RS’s metarepresentation of OS’s utterance, the embedded clause can be anything ranging from a faithful report to a risky interpretation

Preface (in its broad meaning, including preface modifiers) is determinant: There are linguistic expressions, used as prefaces, that

inform H on the explicit/implicit nature of the original representation

This has consequences on H’s inferences on commitment

Types of prefatory expressions verbs (and locutions) that give evidence of RS’s

explicature processing and reporting say/acknowledge/affirm/maintain/declare/add/

announce/answer/assert/deny/divulge… that P verbs (and locutions) that give evidence of RS’s

implicature processing and interpreting imply/hint/mean/insinuate/intimate/… that P

Unmarked verbs admit/recognize

Verbs of thought / psychological prefaces think/believe/consider

Evidence of RS’s explicature processing and reporting (1): direct reported speech The simplest of all cases (Laszlo said: “P”):

1) Laszlo said: “I’ll come”2) Laszlo said, word for word, that he would come

In this case, P, the embedded clause, is presented as matching OS’s original utterance

H infers that OS explicitly said P, so RS’s utterance is a faithful report

Consequently, H infers that OS is strongly committed to P

as a repercussion, H infers that RS is strongly committed to the fact that OS is strongly committed to P

Consider the oddness of: ?In my opinion, Laszlo said he would come

Evidence of RS’s explicature processing and reporting (2): indirect reported speech Cases of explicature processing:

3) Laszlo said he would come [at location x] H infers that either OS actually said P or that he said

something very close to P, i.e. that P’s explicatures resemble (Wilson 2000) the explicatures of OS’s original utterance

Compare the explicatures of the following:4) “I’ll come” [at location x]5) “I’ll be there” [at location x]6) “Yes” (answering the question “will you come?”)

We assume these yield the same explicatures, which match the explicatures of P, as in (3)

Inferences on commitment match those of (1)

Inferring commitment from evidence of a report If RS’s utterance carries quotation marks, it is a

100% full report H can infer OS’s commitment to P since P is what OS

uttered If the lexical semantics of the prefatory verb

indicates explicature processing, H will also be able to assess OS’s commitment to her/his original utterance, since this original utterance shares the same explicatures as P

The resemblance between explicatures is prompted by the (semantically encoded) evidence of a report

Evidence of RS’s implicature processing and interpreting (1) RS can present P as her/his own interpretation:

7) Laszlo implied/hinted that he would come H is led to infer that P is the result of implicature

processing, by RS, of OS’s original utterance H is led to infer that, as an implicature, P

resembles the implicatures derivable from OS’s original utterance

There is no assumption about any resemblance between explicatures by virtue of the inaccessibility to the original utterance

Evidence of RS’s implicature processing and interpreting (2) RS can present her/his own interpretation

through certain modifiers:8) Laszlo said that he would come, but he said it

implicitly ‘implicitly’ modifies the verb to make it adopt

the property of presenting P as an interpretation of OS’s original utterance

(8) shows a loose use of ‘said’, which would explain its slight oddness

Inferring commitment from evidence of an interpretation These verbs and expressions are explicit markers of

implicitness; their lexical semantics denotes that P is the result of implicature processing

Therefore, H cannot directly assess OS’s commitment to P Since P is an interpretation of OS’s original utterance, OS

can always retract from having committed to P However, RS’s interpretation communicates that RS

believes that OS is actually committed to P, even if OS cannot be held liable for the content of P (2nd hand assessment of commitment)

Implicit attitudinals with evidence of an interpretation When RS presents P as an interpretation, he can also

communicate a certain attitude towards P9) Laszlo implicitly admitted he cheated on Nina10) Laszlo explicitly admitted he cheated on Nina

With ‘admit that P’ alone, H has no way of determining whether P is a report or an interpretation (Saussure, forth.)

H can only make risky speculations about OS’s original utterance

However, H can infer RS’s attitude towards P: The interpretation that Laszlo admitted he cheated on Nina

means that he had to cancel other (possibly contradictory) assumptions

Admit P seems to carry not only a presupposition that P is true, but also that P is inappropriate for some or all of the concerned individuals, in particular the hearer (the grounds for attitude recovery).

Commitment and belief fixation What is the point of inferring OS’s commitment in

reported speech? Having reliable information about what is being discussed

(especially in cases of risk communication, e.g. the bird flu) Having access to the source’s (OS) beliefs Having good grounds to evaluate what is being discussed

In some sensitive contexts, such as press reports, it is likely that the inference of the journalist’s opinion about the OS has to do with the audience’s belief fixation (the journalist is often presupposed a competent and benevolent speaker).

Work in progress: further research Corpus-based analyses of press articles displaying reported speech

Importance of prefatory expressions and their modifiers in H’s interpretation

Varieties of cognitive effects derived on the basis of unmarked prefaces (that do not give evidence of a report nor of an interpretation) TROP LARGE - SUPPRIMER

Status of psychological verbs: think/believe/know… that P The explicature/implicature distinction IDEM Importance of effects yielded by tenses

My dad says there were a lot of people at the wedding My dad is saying there were a lot of people at the wedding

Inferring speaker’s commitment to P is a matter of linguistic and contextual information: deontic verbs: “Paul said it’s time for us to go” seems to carry

easily the implicature that the speaker commits himself to P

References

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