Abstract

This conference explores the connection between theoretical aspects of pragmatics and philosophy. We still believe that intentions play a fundamental role in communication and that the hearer’s task is mainly to reconstruct those intentions on the basis of what is explicitly said (the semantics of a linguistic expression) and of contextual clues and cues (Dascal 2003). Sometimes, as Mey argues (Mey 2001), a priori knowledge of a frame and a script will determine interpretation even if one partially says what one wants to say. Both bottom-up and top-down inferential processes are involved (see Jasczolt’s notion of merger representations). Pragmatics can be put to use in understanding of philosophical puzzles (see Igor Douven The pragmatics of belief or Capone (2016) on simple sentences and substitution). Implicit indirect reports can, in some cases, be taken to resolve issues. We welcome contributions in theoretical pragmatics, philosophical pragmatics, societal pragmatics, intercultural pragmatics, clinical pragmatics, pragmatics and cognition, contributions that relate to conversational presuppositions, if-clauses, the pragmatics of ‘de se’ attitudes, proper names, quasi-proper names, proper names as speech acts, pragmemes and speech acts in the cultural context, evolutionary pragmatics, pragmatics and culture, rhetoric and argumentation, pragmatics and the world languages (e.g. Japanese, Persian, Tok Pisin, Papua New Guinea languages, in general, African languages, Asian languages, South American languages, etc.), the pragmatics of funerary rites, natural language semantics, the semantics/pragmatics debate. The organizers will consult with K. Jaszczolt, Mitchell Green, Igor Douven, Yael Sharvit, Louise Cummings, Fabrizio Macagno, Alison Hall, Daniele Panizza, Roberto Graci, Yoko Mizuta, Chusni Hadiati, Alessandra Giorgi for the acceptance of the abstracts and then the selected papers to appear in the book(s). The books are likely to be published in Capone’s series for Springer.