A New Pragmatics -- STPP

Igal Kvart Abstract: A New Pragmatics -- STPP This paper introduces a new Pragmatics -- Steering-Thrust-Posting Pragmatics (STPP), an alternative to the Gricean and Stalnakerian frameworks. This Pragmatics is couched in a new conceptual framework, the main conceptual ingredients of which are: Steering-Thrust, Posting, Pragmatic Stances, and Conversational Etiquette. These conceptual ingredients are introduced and explained in the paper. The scope of this Pragmatics (viz., STPP) is considerably wider than Grice’s Pragmatics due to a few factors -- e.g., it extends to non-propositional Pragmatic Stances (such as action-directed, attitudinal, etc.), and the underpinning conversational etiquette is much wider in scope than Grice’s maxims. Accordingly, Grice’s technical notion of implicature (fully adopted in Stalnaker’s Pragmatics) is dropped – it’s inextricably bound by his system of maxims – and the notion of implicit content (conveyed and Posted) is introduced instead. Steering Thrusts are the vehicles for conveying implicit contents. Unlike implicatures, implicit contents need not be propositional (hence, among other reasons, Grice’s propositional concept of implicatures is not the operative concept in Pragmatics). The task of Linguistic Pragmatics (i.e., where implicit contents are conveyed by verbal acts) is to determine how implicit contents are conveyed, how they are generated (by the speaker) and deciphered (by the hearers). The paper develops the new concepts of Steering Thrusts (which are the Pragmatic contents of verbal acts), Pragmatic Stances, Posting, Dominance (between Steering Thrusts), and Setext (which combines physical setup and Conversational Record). It proposes new Conversational Etiquette — which is not restricted to the Gricean maxims with the limits of rational cooperation toward a common goal). It consists of the norms that govern Pragmatic communication and the commitments speakers thereby incur, which are Postings. Many examples illustrate the new concepts and how the Pragmatics works (e.g., “There is water in the fridge,” “Can you pass the salt?”, and the Bank case), e.g., in particular, how a verbal-act’s dominant action-directed Steering-Thrust can outweigh, or even suppress, its literal (explicit) informational content. The paper also sketches derivative formal approaches to Pragmatics (both constitutive and simulational). In subsequent papers (built on the present paper), this Pragmatics is applied to a new conceptual account of Pragmatic Presupposition (thereby providing an alternative to the Stalnakerian approach), as well as a new conception of Assertion – it’s argued that Asserting is an inherently Pragmatic phenomenon. It also explains why there is no such phenomenon as Pragmatic Encroachment -- as a direct result of STPP (without treating knowledge as graded or context-sensitive in the relevant cases). The new Pragmatics also provides new perspectives for accounting for the important phenomena of anaphoras, Moorean sentences, and Pragmatic inconsistencies, among others.