Page 461 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

suppositions linked to syntactic constructions such as cleft sentences, etc.) both in the construction of texts and in the pragmatic strategies of manipulation of beliefs, or, to use Halliday's categories, both in the textual function and in the interpersonal one. On the one hand, the analysis of the different types and func- tioning of anaphora whose antecedent is not what the preceding text has stated, but what it has presupposed, has both textual and pragmatic relevance. On the other hand, precisely because it is shielded from chal- lenge, communication via presuppositions lends itself to manipulation: suffice it to compare the different persuasive effectiveness of the choice of an assertion embedded in a factive verb versus a simple assertion (e.g., 'People know that solar energy is wishful think- ing' versus 'Solar energy is wishful thinking').
Having defined the semantic nature of different types of presuppositional triggers, one should then recognize the role of pragmatics in the study of the production and interpretation of these potentially highly manipulatory implicata. Obviously, it is more difficult to question something that is communicated only implicitly rather than something which is com- municated openly, if only because what is implicit must be recognized before being attacked. This is pro- ved by the highly polemical and aggressive value underlying any attack to presuppositions; such an attackisseriously face-threatening.
2. Relation with Conversational Implicature
The criteria put forward by Grice for distinguishing conversational implicature from other implicata (i.e., calculability, nondetachability, nonconventionality, indeterminacy, cancelability) have not proved entirely satisfactory, even when integrated with the further criterion of 'reinforceability' (Horn 1991). The cri- terion of cancelability, viewed as crucial by many authors, seems to be problematic (for a discussion, see Levinson 1983). And in any case, cancelability is linked to the degree of formality of the interaction; in unplanned speech it is easily tolerated.
If satisfied with an intuitive differentiation that nevertheless uses these criteria, it can be reasonably maintained that pragmatic presuppositions are oriented, retroactively, toward a background of beliefs, given as shared. Implicatures, on the other hand, are oriented, proactively, toward knowledge yet to be built. Besides (at least if as a prototypical case one thinks of the particularized conversational implicature, i.e., according to Grice, the kind of implicature strictly dependent on the actual context), such knowledge has not necessarily to be valid beyond the real communicative situation. Thus, in order to distinguish the two types of implicata, the criteria of the different conventionality (presuppositions being more conventional than implicatures) and of the different validity (more general in the case of pre-
suppositions, more contingent in the case of implica- tures) are called into play. Presuppositions concern beliefs constituting the background of communi- cation. They become the object of communication, thus losing the status of presupposition, only if some- thing goes wrong; that is, if the addressee does not accept them or questions them, forcing the speaker to put his/her cards on the table. Implicatures, on the contrary, concern a 'knowledge' which is not yet shared and which will become shared only if the addressee goes through the correct inferences, while interpreting the speaker's communicative intention. It is thus more a matter of degree than a dichotomy: the latter, more than the former, requiring the addressee to abandon his/her laziness—the 'principle of inertia' as Van der Auwera (1979) has called it, or the speak- er's reliance on shared beliefs—and to cooperate cre- atively with the discourse. With implicatures, a higher degree of cooperation and involvement is asked of the addressee (the more I am emotionally involved, the more I am willing to carry out inferential work; see Arndt and Janney 1987).
Presuppositions can remain in the background of communication and even remain unconsidered by the addressee without the communication suffering. Implicatures must be calculated for communication to proceed in the direction desired by the speaker. The role of presuppositions and implicatures as against the speaker's expectations and the discourse design is therefore different; the former are oriented toward the already constructed (or given as such); the latter toward the yet to be constructed, or rather toward the 'construction in progress'; the former concern a set of assumptions; the latter their updating.
Presuppositions are more closely linked to what is actually said, to the surface structure of the utterance; implicatures are more closely linked to what is actually meant. Their degree of cancelability also seems to be different: presuppositions are less cancelable than implicatures. The difference between presuppositions and implicatures with respect to the criterion of can- celability could be reformulated in terms of utterance responsibilities and commitment. With pre- suppositions and implicatures, the speaker is com- mitted to different degrees—more with the former, less with the latter—with respect to his/her own implicata. Thus, a possible definition of pragmatic pre- suppositions is: that which the hearer is entitled to believe on the basis of our words. In the case of pre- suppositions, the commitment implicitly undertaken is stronger, and stronger too is the sanction where the presupposition should prove to be groundless. And the reason is that, in the case of presuppositions, an attempt to perform a given speech act, however implicit, has been made; the linguistic devices, how- ever indirect, have traced out a detectable direction. The addressee is authorized to believe that the speak- er's speech act was founded, i.e., that his/her own
Presupposition, Pragmatic
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