Chapter 8

Question 1

the interactional, physical, cultural, and social environment in which utterances are produced

Answer 1

context

Question 2

a type of pragmatic inference that is required in order to determine the explicit message of an utterance

Answer 2

explicated inferences

Question 3

the linguistic code enriched by explicated inferences in order to “fill in the blanks” and obtain the full message of an utterance

Answer 3

explicature

Question 4

the ability to use knowledge of the world (not included in the linguistic system) to interpret the meaning of utterances

Answer 4

extralinguistic competence

Question 5

the set of four maxims (rules) that Grice claims interactional participants follow in order to cooperatively reach understanding; includes the maxims of quantity (speakers should provide just enough information, neither too much nor too little), quality (speakers must assert truthful and well‑supported information), relevance (speakers must make their contributions relevant to the ongoing interaction), and manner (speakers must be brief, clear, unambiguous, and orderly)

Answer 5

Grice’s Maxims

Question 6

a type of pragmatic inference that the speaker intends the addressee to infer based on a set of contextually available assumptions; unlike logical inferences, implicatures are only plausible, but do not follow necessarily; also referred to as particularized conversational implicature

Answer 6

implicature

Question 7

In pragmatics, when a relevant utterance achieves a balance between the quantity of contextual cues informing the utterance and the mental effort necessary to process those cues

Answer 7

optimal relevance

Question 8

the process of applying contextual information to draw inferences, in order to arrive at the intended meaning of a linguistic utterance

Answer 8

pragmatic interpretation

Question 9

the study of how context shapes our use and interpretation of linguistic expressions; the competence to draw from context plausible inferences, which complement linguistic meanings

Answer 9

pragmatics

Question 10

the principle proposed by Sperber and Wilson to replace Grice’s maxims; states that people are automatically geared towards searching for maximally relevant information and that linguistic acts specifically come with a presumption of relevance

Answer 10

Principle of Relevance

Question 11

the process by which the meaning of an expression changes from pragmatic status (i.e., contextually inferred) to semantic status (i.e., conventionally encoded and accessed even in the absence of a supporting context)

Answer 11

semanticization

Question 12

what must be the case for a proposition to be true

Answer 12

truth conditions

Question 13

a type of pragmatic inference that is not intended but could be inferred from the context

Answer 13

uncooperative pragmatic inference