Il gioco linguistico del significato letterale / Literal meaning as a language game
Abstract
Literal Meaning is a widely used notion, which seems to be well rooted in the strong intuition that words have a meaning in themselves. However, as pointed out in previous literature (e.g. Recanati 2004), this theoretical notion seems to be problematic in accounting for some aspects of the nature of linguistic meaning. Embracing these criticisms, we will show how the heuristic power of this notion becomes apparent when looking at some specific types of contexts, namely those language games where it is necessary to retrieve the meaning of words in isolation. This will allow us to argue in favour of consistency of this notion with theoretical framework with a strong focus on the contextual nature of linguistic meaning.
In order to do so:
- We will clarify what we mean by standard notion of literal meaning and the main criticisms coming from contextualist approaches;
- We will show how, in spite of its weaknesses, this notion tends to be widely used, since it seems to capture the intuition that words have a meaning in themselves and therefore that languages rely on a stable lexicon which can be accessed metalinguistically;
- We will show how this notion can still be used within contextualist frameworks to account for some specific types of language games where those metalinguistic operations are necessary.
References
ARIEL, Mira (2002) «The demise of a unique concept of literal meaning», in Journal of pragmatics, 34, pp. 361-402.
AUROUX, Sylvain (1994), La rivolution technologique de la grammatisation, Pierre Mardaga, Liegi (Scrittura e grammatizzazione. Introduzione alla storia delle scienze del linguaggio, trad. it. di S. Romano, Novecento, Palermo 1998).
BIANCHI, Claudia (2009), Pragmatica cognitiva, Laterza, Roma-Bari.
BORG, Emma (20122), Pursuing Meaning, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
BORJESSON, Kristin (2014), The semantics-pragmatics controversy, De Gruyter, Berlin-Boston.
CAPONE, Alessandro (2016), The pragmatics of indirect reports, Springer, Heidelberg-New York.
CARAPEZZA, Marco, CUCCIO, Valentina, (in stampa), Abductive inferences in pragmatic processes, in CAPONE, Alessandro, CARAPEZZA, Marco, LO PIPARO, Franco, Furthers advances in Pragmatics and Philosophy, Springer, New York-Francoforte.
CARSTON, Robyn (2007), How many pragmatics systems are there?, in FRAPOLLI, Maria J. (2007), ed., Saying, meaning, referring. Essays on the philosophy of François Recanati, Palgrave-Macmillian, New York, pp. 18-48.
CAVELL, Stanley (1979), The claim of reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality and Tragedy, Oxford University Press, Oxford (trad. it. La riscoperta dell’ordinario, Carocci, Roma 2001).
ECO, Umberto (1990), I limiti dell’interpretazione, Bompiani, Milano.
DEVITT, Michael (2014), «Linguistic Intuitions and cognitive penetrability», in The Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication, vol. 9, pp. 1-14.
GAYRAL, Françoise, KAYSER, Daniel, LEVY, François (2004), «Challenging the principle of compositionality in interpreting natural language texts», Conference on Compositionality, Concepts and Cognition, Düsseldorf.
GIBBS, Raymond (1994), The poetics of mind. Figurative thought, language and understanding, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
KATZ, J. Jerrold (1977) Propositional Structure and Illocutionary Force, Crowell, New York, 19802.
LA MANTIA, Francesco (2012), Che senso ha? Polisemia e attività di linguaggio, Mimesis, Milano.
LA MANTIA, Francesco (2011), «Preso alla lettera. Il significato letterale come problema normativo» in Diritto e questioni pubbliche, n.11, pp. 443-468.
LYONS, John (1987), Semantics, in LYONS, John, ed., New Horizons of Linguistics 2, Penguin, London.
MAZZONE, Marco (2013), Automatic and controlled processes in pragmatics, in CAPONE, Alessandro, CARAPEZZA, Marco, LO PIPARO, Franco (2013) Perspectives on Linguistics Pragmatics, Springer, Heidelberg-New York, pp. 443-468.
NIEUWLAND Mante S., VAN BERKUM Jos J. (2006), «When peanuts fall in love: N440 evidence for the power of discourse», in J. Cogn Neurosci, 18(7), pp. 1098-1111.
NUNBERG, Geoffry (1979), «The non-uniqness of semantic solutions: polisemy», in Linguistic and Philosophy, 3, 143-184.
NUNBERG, Geoffrey (1995), Transfers of Meaning, Journal of Semantics, n. 12, pp. 109-132.
PAOLUCCI, Claudio (2010), Strutturalismo e interpretazione, Bompiani, Milano.
RASTIER, Francois (2001), Arts et sciences du texte, PUF, Paris (Arti e scienze del testo. Per una semiotica delle culture, trad. it. di A. Perri, Mimesis, Roma 2015).
RECANATI, François (2004), Literal Meanings, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
RECANATI, François (2009), Compositionality, flexibility and context dependence, in HINZEN, Wolfram, MACHERY, Edouard, WERNING, Marcus, eds., Oxford Handbook of Compositionality, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
SEARLE, John (1978), ‹«Literal meaning», in Erketniss, n. 13, pp. 207-224.
SEARLE, John (1980), «The Background of Meaning» in SEARLE, John, KIEFER, Ferenc, BIERWISCH, Manfred, eds., Speech Acts Theory and Pragmatics, Springer, Dordrecht, pp. 221-232.
SPERBER, Dan, WILSON, Deirdre (19952), Relevance. Communication and Cognition, Blackwell, Oxford.
TRAVIS, Charles (1989), The uses of Language, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
WITTGENSTEIN, Ludwig (20094), (RF), Philosophical Investigations, Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, (Ricerche Filosofiche, trad. it. di R. Trinchero, Einaudi, Torino, 1999).
WITTGENSTEIN, Ludwig (1992), (US), Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology. The Inner and the Outer, Blackwell, Oxford (Ultimi scritti 1948-1951. La filosofia della psicologia, trad. it. di B. Agnese, a cura di A. G. Gargani, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2004).
Works published in RIFL are released under Creative Commons Licence:Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
