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Stereotypical Relations and Utterance Understanding: An Introduction to Xu Sheng‐Huan’s Stereotypical Relation‐Based Approach to Pragmatics
Author(s) -
Bingzhang Wu
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
language and linguistics compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.619
H-Index - 44
ISSN - 1749-818X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1749-818x.2009.00168.x
Subject(s) - utterance , pragmatics , linguistics , interdependence , relation (database) , context (archaeology) , similarity (geometry) , psychology , perception , expression (computer science) , function (biology) , semantics (computer science) , computer science , sociology , artificial intelligence , philosophy , history , social science , archaeology , database , neuroscience , image (mathematics) , programming language , evolutionary biology , biology
An utterance hardly provides adequate information for its understanding, but the stereotypical relations (SRs) suggested by its linguistic components and mode of expression help to complement the explicitly expressed content, thus making the utterance serve its communicative function. Stereotypical relations are a speaker/hearer’s perception and memory of the relations between things in the experiential world. Such relations, once entrenched, are the cognitive device by which humans understand, represent, and express the world. Things in SRs are interdependent; the presence of one entails that of another. Therefore, an utterance implicates the necessary information by SRs to ‘fill up’ the information gap in the context of communication. Stereotypical relations can be characterized in terms of similarity and proximity, both of which are categories of degree.