Referential Pragmatics

Introduction

Leech (1983:11) briefly mentions the label for the area that we will discuss, namely, referential pragmatics. He defines it as “the assignment of reference to referential expressions in a given utterance” (ibid.). The notion of reference briefly popped up. Let us explore the area through an example. Consider this statement:

The Palgrave editor is who exactly? There are several such editors who work for the publisher Palgrave, and there have been many such editors – which one are we talking about? This is a referring expression directing the reader to pick out a specific person from the context. Similarly, “my office” is directing the reader to pick out a particular place. Again, the reader will have to work out which office is being talked about. What of me and my? Clearly, they refer to the author of this statement, and it is up to the reader to work out who that author is. Similarly, today refers to the time period in which the author was writing, and we would need to work out when that is. All these expressions involve working out connections with context; they are referring expressions. In a very general sense, all expressions used in relation to something out there in the world – a world which includes the discourses we create – can be said to involve reference to something. Reference, broadly conceived, is a topic of special interest in semantics and philosophy. This kind of very general relation is not our focus here (for more on this, see Frege’s classic [1892] 1952 work on sense and reference). We are interested in expressions, such as those in our example, whose meaning will seem inadequate without the interpreter having made a connection with a specific part of a specific context – a referent. The fact that those expressions involve a referent, an entity to which they refer, means that all referring expressions presuppose the existence of an entity. We will use the term referring to denote the narrower, more dynamic – indeed pragmatic – usage of expressions that connect with context, both drawing meaning from it and shaping it. Note that referring expressions do not in themselves refer to entities, but are used and interpreted by participants as doing so – that is what makes them pragmatic.

One key issue when considering referring expressions is, naturally, what specific aspect of context the speaker is referring to. In pragmatics, there are at least three key dimensions involved in referring. Consider, for instance, the following excerpt from the film Four Weddings and a Funeral, which starts when Charles attempts to introduce himself to another guest at the wedding:

We can identify at least three different forms of referring going on in this rather “confused” interaction. First, we have both Charles and the guest referring to themselves and the other through various pronouns, including I and you. These involve pointing to a specific referent in the extralinguistic context and, most importantly, indicating how this referent relates to some point of reference (here the speaker). This is traditionally termed deixis. Second, there is some confusion (on the guest’s part at least) as to whether Charles (when saying my name is Charles) refers to a person the guest already knows, or one he is getting to know at that very moment, or what we might term epistemic aspects of context. In this case, the speakers are referring to (here different) assumptions about who they think the other person has in mind. When the speaker assumes that the hearer knows the specific referent in mind, this comes under scope of definiteness, while when the speaker doesn’t make such an assumption, it is a matter of indefiniteness. The crux of the guest’s confusion here is the guest has his brother in mind when Charles is referred to, and consequently thinks that Charles does as well. Third, some expressions they use are used to refer back to things they have said earlier. For instance, when the guest utters my own brother, he is referring back to his previous reference to Charles who died 20 years ago. Instances where speakers are referring back to what has been earlier referred to in previous talk, or what might be termed linguistic aspects of context or co-text, comes under the scope of anaphora. We will be explaining in more detail the pragmatics of these three forms of referring.

Supplying a list of English referring expressions is not straightforward, however, as debates rage over where to draw the line with respect to what is referring and what is not. Let us first briefly consider the extremes. All scholars would agree that verbs and prepositions are not referring expressions. Consider our example [2.1] above: the verb visited and the preposition in were the only items we did not claim to be referring expressions. To understand them, you do not need to pick out a specific visit or a specific spatial relation with respect to the office (we ignore here the fact that visited carries a past tense marker). The other extreme is more controversial. Many, if not all, scholars would agree that the demonstrative this is a referring expression of some kind. But there are other possible candidates for referring expressions too. Table 2.1 lists English referring expressions that are thought to be so by many scholars.

In broad terms, the categories of Table 2.1 are ordered from those whose meaning is more descriptive, more encoded in the abstract sense of the expression, to those whose meaning is more contextual, more dependent on a relationship with a specific contextual aspect. The former is more semantic and the latter more pragmatic. The book, a definite expression, has some descriptive meaning in the abstract, as the noun book denotes the concept of a book, although we do not know which particular book is being referred to; this, a deictic expression, has very little descriptive meaning in the abstract, although we may suppose that it concerns something relatively close in some way to the speaking voice (compare with that). The organization of this Topic is based on this table. First, we attend to the extremes of the table, definite expressions followed by deictic expressions, and then anaphoric expressions in the middle. We take a more interactional view of how referring expressions are used and understood.