Year: 2018
Type: article
Abstract: Inferences in Interaction and Language Change 537 of social action.But for interaction, too, pragmatic inferences play a crucial role; they have a profound impact on how social meaning is construed.As an example of the intricacies of pragmatic inference processes in interaction, consider the text passage in (1), taken from a novel by U.S. American writer T.C. Boyle.Alfred Kinsey, the character referred to in third person, has just invited the protagonist John Milk over for dinner, stating at the same time that Milk probably does not get "all that much home cooking".After a brief discussion of this point, Kinsey returns to his unanswered invitation, which is where the excerpt starts.Example (1): plans (T.C.Boyle.2005.The Inner Circle, 47.London et al.: Penguin) 01 "Well," he said, pulling up short and swinging round on me, "so how about it?Shall we 02 say Saturday, six p.m.?" 03 I must have hesitated, because he added, in a different tone altogether, almost as if he 04 were preparing to build a case, "If you're not doing anything, of course.You don't have 05 any plans, do you?For Saturday?" 06 I looked off down the deserted street, then came back to him."No," I said."Not really."In lines 1 and 2, Kinsey re-opens the question under discussion, namely his invitation to dinner.Apparently, Milk does not react immediately to Kinsey's two questions (at least this is what the narrator Milk formulates in line 3).This hesitation leads to an inference on Kinsey's part.Specifically, Kinsey's continuation in lines 4-5 suggests that he inferred from Milk's hesitation that Milk might not accept the invitation.This is however not the case, as Milk claims that he is not busy on Saturday (line 6) and thereby accepts the invitation, as also evidenced in the progress of the novel.Kinsey's inference that motivates his utterance in lines 4-5 is a prototypical example of an inference in the sense that it is an abduction.Upon noting Milk's failure to take the turn immediately, Kinsey infers that he might decline the invitation.We may additionally say that a further inferencing leads to Kinsey's assumption that the most likely reason for Milk to decline the invitation would be to already have an appointment on Saturday.The fact that Kinsey makes this inference explicit -in the form of a question in lines 4-5 -should not be seen as facilitating Milk's ability to refuse the invitation.Rather, Kinsey effectively pressures Milk into accepting the invitation by excluding the most likely reason for this refusal.Our interpretation is supported by the fact that Kinsey adopts "a different tone altogether", which Milk interprets as him "preparing to build a case".Note also that Kinsey's question You don't have any plans, do you? is biased in the sense that it presupposes that Milk does not have any plans.By introducing the proposition as a presupposition, Kinsey makes it more difficult for Milk to decline the invitation.Note that for this rhetorical effect it is not actually necessary for Kinsey to believe in the proposition.One page later in the text, Milk narrates that he indeed canceled a date with his future wife on that Saturday.This example makes apparent some of the inferential processes of the characters (as constructed by the author of the novel) that can be captured by definition of inference given above.However, our example also demonstrates possible problems with the definition of inference given above, as well as additional important characteristics of inferences in conversation.First, Kinsey's inference is not based on a verbally expressed proposition, but rather nonverbal behavior, i.e., Milk's assumed pause.This goes to show that as domain-general mental processes, inferences can be based on quite different kinds of indexical cues and are not limited to verbal stimuli.Second, the example shows that a given 'premise' can lead to different inferences.Kinsey's inference (Milk might have hesitated because he might decline the invitation) is a likely inference due to the social convention of hesitating before realizing a non-preferred action such as refusing an invitation.Other inferences would have been possible, but are less likely.For instance, Milk might have simply not been following the conversation.This means that there will usually be not only one but a set of possible inferences from one 'premise'.This observation leads us to formulate a third problem.Interactants have to know which one of these possible inferences is most likely given a specific situation.This process of choosing between possible inferences -and actually the raising of any inference itself too -therefore presupposes different kinds of knowledge, such as social conventions.Consequently, inference is not a process that runs automatically and unequivocally from premises to conclusions.
Source: Open Linguistics
Authors: Oliver Ehmer, Malte Rosemeyer
Institutions: University of Freiburg, KU Leuven
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $848
OpenAlex ID: W2911278137