‘Pointless’ is a popular TV quiz-show series currently aired in the UK by the BBC. It’s hosted by Alexander Armstrong and Richard Osman, whom, along with the contestants, often engage in a spot of banter. [If you’re not familiar with the show, here’s an episode.] This banter specifically features in (what the publishers say is) […]
Tag: pragmatics
Kinda Sorta Linguistic Research
If you ever say “kinda” or “sorta”, there’s a good chance you’ve been using ‘Pragmatic Halos’ without even knowing about it. Linguistically speaking, ‘Pragmatic Halos’ can include phrases that are not strictly true (but that are neither lies or mistakes) and which are a normal part of honest, error-free discourse. “It is a truism that […]
Praga-dialectics update: An analysis of “Yes, but …”
The ArgLab at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal, is concerned with argumentation and decision making processes as far as they can be philosophically approached and thus related with Practical Reason and Values. For a representative recent publication from the lab, see: ‘Managing disagreement through yes, but… constructions: An […]
Salmon’s And the Meaning of Must
Practically speaking, one must perhaps at some point confront the meaning of the word “must.” Salmon had done so. His study on the matter is: “Conventional Implicature, Presupposition, and the Meaning of Must,” William Salmon [pictured here], Journal of Pragmatics, vol. 43, no. 14, November 2011, pp. 3416-3430. The author is at the University of […]