Context as other minds : the pragmatics of sociality, cognition, and communication / T. Givon.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Givón, Talmy, 1936-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Pragmatics.

Pragmatism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (299 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam ; Philadelphia, PA : John Benjamins Pub., 2005.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Givon's new book re-casts pragmatics, and most conspicuously the pragmatics of sociality and communication, in neuro-cognitive, bio-adaptive, evolutionary terms. The fact that context, the core notion of pragmatics, is a framing operation undertaken on the fly through judgements of relevance, has been well known since Aristotle, Kant and Peirce. But the context that is relevant to the pragmatics of sociality and communication is a highly specific mental operation - the mental modeling of the interlocutor's current, rapidly shifting belief-and-intention states. The construed context of social interaction and communication is thus a mental representation of other minds. Following a condensed intellectual history of pragmatics, the book investigates the adaptive pragmatics of lexical-semantic categories - the 1st-order framing of "reality", what cognitive psychologists call "semantic memory". Utilizing the network model, the book then takes a fresh look at the adaptive underpinnings of metaphoric meaning. The core chapters of the book outline the re-interpretation of "communicative context" as the systematic, on-line construction of mental models of the interlocutor's current, rapidly-shifting states of belief and intention. This grand theme is elaborated through examples from the grammar of referential coherence, verbal modalities and clause-chaining. In its final chapters, the book pushes pragmatics beyond its traditional bounds, surveying its interdisciplinary implications for philosophy of science, theory of personality, personality disorders and the calculus of social interaction.

Contents:

Context as Other Minds

Title page

LCC data

Dedication

Contents

Preface

1. Perspective

1.1. The conundrum of context

1.2. Russell's paradox

1.3. Objectivism

1.4. Relativism

1.5. Other minds

1.6. Recurrent themes

1.7. Early roots

1.8. Modern strands

Notes

2. Categories as prototypes

2.1. Preamble

2.2. Philosophical roots

2.3. Linguistic roots

2.4. Prototypes: The adaptive middle

2.5. The adaptive underpinnings of prototype-like categories

2.6. Some social consequences of natural categorization

2.7. The cultural context of social decision-making

3. Semantic networks and metaphoric language

3.1. Culturally shared generic mental maps

3.2. General design of the human communication system

3.3. The generic lexicon as a network of nodes and connections

3.4. Metaphoric or non-literal meaning

3.5. Figurative language and semantic networks

3.6. Adaptive motivation and frequency distribution of figurative language

3.7. Final reflections

4. Grammar and other minds

4.1. Sociality, communication and other minds

4.2. Mental models

4.3. Grammar

4.4. Grammar and other minds

4.5. The selectivity of mental models

4.6. Other minds in an evolutionary perspective

5. Referential coherence

5.1. Coherence as mental operations

5.2. Coherence as grounding

5.3. Use frequency, markedness and cognitive status

5.4. Cognitive model

5.5. Discussion

6. Propositional modalities

6.1. Propositions vs. speakers

6.2. Epistemic modalities

6.3. Tense

6.4. Aspect

6.5. Deontic sub-modes of irrealis

6.6. The pragmatics of NEG-assertions

6.7. Evidentiality

6.8. Knowledge and power: The interaction between epistemics and deontics

6.9. Summary: Propositional modalities and other minds

Notes.

7. Discourse coherence and clause chaining

7.1. Reorientation

7.2. Clause chaining

7.3. Pre-initial clauses ('coherence bridges')

7.4. Chain-initial vs. chain-medial clauses

7.5. Clause-level vs. chain-level conjunction

7.6. Chain-medial cataphoric switch-reference (DS) devices

7.7. Recapitulation: clause chaining and other minds

8. Community as other mind

8.1. The scientist vs. the organism

8.2. Reductionist extremes in the philosophy of science

8.3. The pragmatics of empirical science

8.4. Multiple loci of pragmatic inference in the empirical cycle

8.5. The social pragmatics of science: Community as other minds

9. The adaptive pragmatics of 'self'

9.1. Preamble

9.2. The essentialist self

9.3. The multiple self

9.4. The impaired self

9.5. The complex self as an adaptive strategy

10. The pragmatics of martial arts

10.1. Preamble

10.2. Adaptive realism: There shall be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth

10.3. The paradox of Karma

10.4. Tao and Wu-Wei

10.5. Wu-Wei as paradox

10.6. Wu-Wei as strategy

10.7. The paradox of the invisible leader

10.8. The yoga of form

10.9. The ritualization of form

10.10. Complexity: Seven paradoxes

References

Index.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786612156632

9781282156630

1282156632

9789027294340

9027294348

OCLC:

85024968