Introduction: The Pragmatics of Humor
Abstract/Description
Objections to Gricean pragmatics on grounds that its claims (particularly its claim of universality) are falsified by taking power, social status, gender, & institutional roles into account are refuted by showing that (1) context & background knowledge, which include these factors, are listed by H. Paul Grice (1989) among the factors determining implicature; (2) the universality of inferential processes used by participants in conversations in no way diminishes cross-cultural differences in conclusions participants reach; & (3) the cooperative principle is not invalidated by empirical studies of non-European cultures that have been cited against it. Given the existence of universals of language, it is asserted that the relation between society & language can only be dialectic & that Gricean pragmatics belongs in a materialistic-dialectic theory of language. The use of constructed examples in Gricean pragmatics is defended on metatheoretical grounds, as otherwise pragmatically ill-formed discourse & inferencing are to be ignored.
