Delineating how PCIs develop
into GCIs from a cognition-pragmatics
diachronic perspective: A case study of Chinese méimù
NinaLiang,YanfeiZhang and YuanZhang
Shandong University | Shandong Normal University
Abstract
The Gricean GCI-PCI divide has long been questioned in
linguistic pragmatics. Taking Chinese méimù in the CCL corpus
as the case, the present study proposes the cognition-pragmatics diachronic
model to examine Grice’s GCI-PCI divide. It is found that with the frequency of
repeated usage increasing over time, PCIs develop into GCIs; these two types of
conversational implicatures are not easily divided. Semantic change from PCIs to
GCIs is a dynamic process of cognition from individual entrenchment to
collective conventionalization. By schematization and categorization, the former
gradually builds an individual’s knowledge network with many entrenched PCI
nodes, while the latter is reflected as sharing some parts of the individual’s
knowledge network in the collective minds, i.e., the community’s knowledge
network with some conventionalized GCI nodes, further forming socio-cultural
conventions in a speech community. During this process, there is a division of
labor between context and conventions. Therefore, the diachronic study sheds new
light on the relationship between GCIs and PCIs.
According to Grice’s classical theory, conversational implicatures are
classified into generalized conversational implicatures (GCIs) and particularized
conversational implicatures (PCIs). GCIs refer to the cases in which “the use of a
certain form of words in an utterance would normally (in the absence of special
circumstances) carry such-and-such an implicature or type of implicature” (Grice 1989, 37), while PCIs refer to the
cases in which “an implicature is carried by saying that p on a particular occasion
in virtue of special features of the context” (Grice 1989, 37). Defined thus, the difference between GCIs and PCIs is
that the former are the implicatures that linguistic forms in a general context
normally carry, whereas the latter are inferred in a particular context. The Gricean
GCI-PCI divide has long been questioned in linguistic pragmatics. In order to make
clear the relationship between GCIs and PCIs, this study intends to discuss Grice’s
GCI-PCI divide from a diachronic perspective by adopting Chinese
méimù in the CCL corpus as the data.
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