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On the Automaticity of Pragmatic Processes: a Modular Proposal

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Experimental Pragmatics

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Pragmatics, Language and Cognition ((PSPLC))

Abstract

In the US legal system, experts are often called upon to testify on behalf of one or the other side of a legal dispute. On one particular occasion, I testified that employees in a financial benefit plan had been led to buy company stock in various implicit but persuasive ways. For example, a company brochure provided step-by-step instructions on how employees could allocate retirement funds to various investment options. Employees were instructed, ‘first, you decide how much of your investment should be in Company stock’. I argued that the pragmatic concept of presupposition applied to this statement. The instruction carries the presupposition that at least some of the investment would be in that stock, and so people who would read it would be implicitly led to accept that presupposition. The opposing lawyer asked, ‘wouldn’t you agree, Doctor, that pragmatics is the fuzziest and least precise field in linguistics?’. He went on to ask if I also agreed that pragmatics was essentially a grab-bag for everything not covered by syntax and semantics, and hence not to be taken seriously. I disagreed with both of his attempted assertions.

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Authors
  1. Sam Glucksberg
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institut des Sciences Cognitives, France

    Ira A. Noveck

  2. Institut Jean Nicod, France

    Dan Sperber

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© 2004 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

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Glucksberg, S. (2004). On the Automaticity of Pragmatic Processes: a Modular Proposal. In: Noveck, I.A., Sperber, D. (eds) Experimental Pragmatics. Palgrave Studies in Pragmatics, Language and Cognition. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230524125_4

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