Page 465 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

tinguish between presuppositions without which the act is not performed (e.g., promising somebody some- thing which one does not have), and presuppositions which, if unsatisfied, make the act unhappy (e.g., promising something insincerely). There are pre- suppositions whose satisfaction can be seen in binary terms. For other presuppositions, satisfaction can be seen in scalar terms, in the sense that they can be more or less satisfied: these are the ones concerning the appropriateness of an act, on which it is possible to negotiate (an order, although impertinent, has been given; advice, although from an unauthoritative source, has been put forward, etc.). The role of non- verbal communication in the successful performance of acts has to a large extent still to be investigated (Arndt and Janney 1987). For example, if someone offers me congratulations on my promotion with a long face, can I still say s/he is congratulating me?
In any case, the different types of infelicity help recall the substantial homogeneity of linguistic action to action simpliciter: pragmatics must be connected to praxeology, to the study of actions which, before being true or false, appropriate or inappropriate, are effec- tive or ineffective.
A decisive move for the analysis of pragmatic pre- suppositions is that of connecting the typology of infelicities to research which is empirically founded on the functioning of linguistic and nonlinguistic inter- action. For example, in conversation, the typology can be related to the various mechanisms of repairs or, more generally, to research on misunderstandings in dialogue (e.g., Shimanoff 1980; Dascal 1985) and on pathological communication (Abbeduto and Rosenberg 1987). In the case of the 'disconfirmation' studied by the Palo Alto school, this may bring about the suspension of a background presupposition about the other's legitimacy as a speaker (and therefore on his/her legitimacy tout court).
To achieve a dynamic view of pragmatic pre- suppositions, it is crucial to consider presuppositions not only as preconditions of the act (e.g., Karttunen and Peters 1977), but also as effects: if the pre- supposition is not challenged, it takes effect retro- actively. 'If you do not react against my order, you acknowledge my power'; 'if you follow my advice, you accept me as an expert who knows what is best for you'; 'if you do not question my assessment, you ascribe a competence to me' (see Ducrot 1972:96- 97; Sbisa and Fabbri 1980:314-15; Streeck 1980: 145).
The analysis of implicata still requires much theor- etical and applied work. It is possible to sum up some of the steps. One can imagine the implicata of which pragmatic presuppositions are a part, as types of com- mitments assumed by the speaker in different degrees and ways. The different degrees of cancelability according to which the types of implicata have been traditionally classified, are related to a stronger or
weaker communicative commitment: the speaker is responsible for the implicata conveyed by his/her linguistic act; if the addressee does not raise any objec- tion, he/she becomes coresponsible for it. A decisive step is that of leaving behind the truth-functional heritage: rather than recognizing a presupposition as true, the matter is to accept it as valid.
For a pragmatic analysis of pragmatic pre- suppositions, it is furthermore necessary to consider the following:
(a) A sequential-textualdimension (Eco 1990:225). Presuppositional phenomena can be explained only by taking a cotextual, sequential dimen- sion into account (which, however, is implicit, albeit in an idealized way, in Grice's criterion of cancelability), as well as a rhetorical dimension (which is implicit in the Sadock and Horn cri- terion of reinforceability). For a study of prag- matic presuppositions, it is necessary to move from an analysis of predicates within single sentences to the analysis of textual structures in which the presupposition is one of the effects. Presuppositions change the legal situation of speakers (Ducrot 1972:90 ff.; Sbisa 1989), i.e., their rights and duties within a context which is being built up along the way. The projection problem (for a discussion, see Levinson 1983), namely the problem of how the presuppositions of a simple sentence are or are not inherited from a complex sentence, may be reformulated in a pragmatic and textual perspective as a problem of the constraints, not only thematic, on coherence and acceptability that arise in the construction of a discourse.
(b) An anthropological-cultural-social dimension. Much has still to be done in the research on shared knowledge, on the kinds of beliefs which can be taken for granted within a given cultural and social group. Presuppositions are a way of building up such knowledge and of reinforcing it. The social relevance of this research, which might be profitably connected to work in the theory of argumentation (e.g., Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's 1958 analysis) is obvious. As Goffman (1983:27) writes: 'the felicity con- dition behind all other felicity conditions, [is]... Felicity's Condition: to wit, any arrange- ment which leads us to judge an individual's verbal acts to be not a manifestation of strange- ness. Behind Felicity's Condition is our sense of what it is to be sane.'
(c) A psychological dimension. The analysis of implicit communication, though avoiding psy- chologism, does require a psychological adequacy. Thus, we tend to choose those topics which are at least partially shared, which enable one to be allusive and elliptical, we produce 'exclusive' utterances that only the addressee
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