Pragmatics Between Experiment and Rationality: Response to Chapman

Abstract

This paper discusses the relevance of experimental evidence to theoretical debates about the psychological plausibility of Grice’s theory of conversational implicature. Existing pragmatic theories, for example, Gricean pragmatics or relevance theory, are general frameworks for thinking about pragmatic phenomena, but, in general, they do not provide detailed models of specific utterance situations. This means that consistency or perceived inconsistency with experimental results provides only weak arguments for the debate between the different pragmatic schools. In particular, I argue that there exist no experimental studies that would pose serious problems for the Gricean account. With respect to the claim that psychological plausibility is the ultimate criterion by which pragmatic theories should be evaluated, I argue that a comprehensive pragmatic theory has to encompass a theory of cognitive processing as well as a theory that explains pragmatic behaviour in terms of rational interaction. I recommend a theory’s ability to predict pragmatic behaviour as a key criterion of success.