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Pragmatics and Processing
Author(s) -
Geurts Bart,
RubioFernández Paula
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
ratio
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.475
H-Index - 29
eISSN - 1467-9329
pISSN - 0034-0006
DOI - 10.1111/rati.12113
Subject(s) - pragmatics , epistemology , linguistics , point (geometry) , criticism , psychology , ask price , philosophy , literature , geometry , mathematics , economy , economics , art
Gricean pragmatics has often been criticised for being implausible from a psychological point of view. This line of criticism is never backed up by empirical evidence, but more importantly, it ignores the fact that G rice never meant to advance a processing theory, in the first place. Taking our lead from M arr (1982), we distinguish between two levels of explanation: at the W ‐level, we are concerned with what agents do and why; at the H ‐level, we ask how agents do whatever it is they do. Whereas pragmatics is pitched at the W ‐level, processing theories are at the H ‐level. This is not to say that pragmatics has no implications for psychology at all, but it is to say that its implications are less direct than is often supposed.