Pragmatics and the social meaning of determiners
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Language users draw all kinds of inferences concerning the opinions, moods, backgrounds, and social relations of speakers on the basis of what they say, and much of what is conveyed depends only indirectly, if at all, on the literal content of what is said. Though meaning beyond the literal comprises a hefty and potent share of linguistic meaning--as recognized in the traditions of both Gricean pragmatics and meaning-based sociolinguistics--much remains to be uncovered and explained as regards this domain. In this work, I develop a socio-pragmatic framework for understanding meaning beyond the literal, with an eye toward social meaning in particular, and with definite referential phrases as my empirical focus. I apply the framework in two case studies of social meaning, examining the definite article 'the' and demonstratives. In the first case study, I show that, in referring to a group of people, using 'the' ('the Americans') as opposed to a bare plural ('Americans') tends to depict the group as a monolith of which the speaker is not a part. Second, I sharpen the insights of previous research on the social meanings of demonstratives (e.g., Lakoff 1974), and explain why they serve as a useful resource for expressing exclamativity and evaluativity and for promoting a sense of shared perspective and experience between interlocutors. In both cases, I explain the relevant social meanings via the socio-pragmatic framework developed herein: we can understand the social meanings associated with these expressions by examining the expressions' content in the light of contextual (especially social) factors and the content of functionally related alternative expressions. In addition to providing new insights into the social character of English determiners, this work makes the case that social meaning is an indispensable facet of interpretation and use, demonstrates the advantages of pursuing semantic, pragmatic, and sociolinguistic research in tandem, and pushes toward a unifying theory of meaning beyond the literal.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2014 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Acton, Eric K |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Linguistics. |
| Primary advisor | Eckert, Penelope |
| Primary advisor | Potts, Christopher, 1977- |
| Thesis advisor | Eckert, Penelope |
| Thesis advisor | Potts, Christopher, 1977- |
| Thesis advisor | Podesva, Robert |
| Advisor | Podesva, Robert |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Eric K. Acton. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Linguistics. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2014. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2014 by Eric Kenneth Acton
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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