A Counterpoint on Pragmatics in Language
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.4396/2025060V02Keywords:
logicality, syntax vs. semantics, semantics vs. pragmatics, new WittgensteinAbstract
According to the so-called Logicality+Modulation proposal, linguistic constructions such as “It is raining and it is not raining” are judged as acceptable by speakers because they can be reinterpreted as informative sentences such as “It is raining and it is not raining heavily”. This seems to corroborate the idea that the expressive capacities of language are determined not as much by what linguistic constructions say about the world, as by what speakers can make them say about the world. In the Logicality perspective, however, such possibility is meant to be constrained by the essential characteristics of the language system, which is determined by biology, thus at a variance with more relaxed conceptions of linguistic expressivity as determined ultimately, or solely, by historically-determined contingencies. In this brief contribution, I relate this contrast with the one between the Ineffabilist and the Resolute readings of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (the “New-Wittgenstein debate”). The analogy may allow for a clarification of the positions under discussion, shedding some light on the way pragmatic elements may enter our reflections on language.
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