Situatedeness and the Making of Meaning: Pragmatics, Pragmemes, and Modality. An Essay

Abstract

Societal pragmatics, with its focus on the broad social functions of language, offers a contextually-hewn perspective on the situatedness of human communication, be this (non)verbal, visual, gestural in origin, or any combination of these. In previous, post-Austinian approaches to Speech Act Theory, instances or acts of, primarily verbal communication, have traditionally been particularized as speech acts and referred to as representatives or assertives, directives, commissives, expressives and declarations (Searle JR, Speech acts: An essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1969). Such general categorizations and their associated terminology vary considerably according to the theoretical stance adopted and its attendant descriptive framework. As a corrective to the view of speech acts as taxonomic prototypes, where what is uttered in conversation by a speaker to a peer is held to be immanent to the particular act thus expressed, this essay explores how, in communication, speech acts, once instantiated, now become situated, as they are simultaneously exteriorized and mediated through their contexts of utterance. The paper therefore endorses Mey’s observation that there are “no such ‘things’ as speech acts per se, only acts of speech in a situation” (Mey JL, Pragmatic acts. In Brown K (ed) Encyclopedia of language and linguistics. Elsevier, London, 2006) or, as he later observes, “No speech act is viable by itself. Speech acts as such do not exist, unless they are situated [my italics]” (Mey JL, Anticipatory pragmatics. In: Closing advice at the Third International Workshop on Emancipatory Pragmatics. Japan’s Women’s University, Tokyo, 2009). From this ‘situatedness’ arises the original concept of ‘pragmeme’, which is purposefully adopted here after Mey’s pioneering work in the field (Pragmatics: An introduction. Blackwell, Oxford, pp 208ff, 2001 [1993]). ‘Situatedness’, it is argued, is a form of ‘embedding’, where the interpretation of an utterance is considered to be “embedded in [its] situation of use” (Capone 2005. Pragmemes (a study with reference to Italian). Journal of Pragmatics 37, 1355–1371; 2010. Between Scylla and Charybdis: The semantics and pragmatics of de se. Intercultural Pragmatics 7(3):471–503). To elaborate on ‘situatedness’ and ‘pragmemic instantiation’, this essay looks at some mini-case studies before turning to the linguistic domain of modality as the basis for their further investigation, given the centrality of the modal notions of ‘possibility’ and ‘necessity’ to human thought and action in the world. Reference is also made to visual and verbal-visual (multimodal) communication.

Les baobobs, avant de grandir, ça commence par être petit.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Le Petit Prince