Abstract
This chapter revolves around three topics: social, cognitive, and structural issues of indirect reporting. Regarding the social issues, this chapter discusses Goffman’s dramaturgical sociology and Grice’s Cooperative Principle. As related to cognitive aspects, Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance Theory and its relation to indirect reports are discussed, where it is argued that indirect reports are cases of ostensive behaviour because, by reporting others, the reporting speaker has an intention in mind that needs to be communicated as clearly as possible. Moreover, it is argued that indirect reports are strongly influenced by individuals’ appraisals. Both the hearer and the reporting speaker participate in indirect reports based on their appraisals of the event (indirect reporting forms a bridge between the molecular and molar way of viewing emotion). Likewise, some structural features of indirect reporting are elaborated in this chapter (issues such as ‘complementiser that’, verbs of propositional attitude, modes of representation, etc.). This chapter concludes that it is unfair to approach the indirect report merely as a speech act being directed only by restricted syntactic and semantic rules. Indirect reports are complex language games, to refer to the words of Ludwig Wittgenstein.
A sociocognitive structure is defined by the cognitive and social elements in a given way of knowing. The term sociocognitive emphasises the fact that a way of knowing, social thought, is not composed purely of cognitive elements, but of both cognitive and social elements. In the realm of social thought, unlike formal thought, the social and the cognitive are indissociable.
(Windisch, 1990, p. 14)
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Notes
- 1.
According to Manstead and Fischer (2001, p. 221), “[a]ppraisals are considered to reflect the meaning of an event for the individual and its implications for his or her personal well-being and are thus located outside the realm of the social environment.”
- 2.
This is elaborated more in the chapter related to accountability (Chap. 5).
- 3.
Capone (2016, p. 14) argues that “principle of Charity operates in the language and compels the reporter to offer an image of the original speaker which is acceptable.” Conforming to Capone, this principle imposes amendments to obviate possible deficiencies or patent contradictions.
- 4.
The ‘good Samaritan principle’ states that the interlocutors should do their best to serve their conversational partner’s goal(s).
- 5.
By ‘team’, Goffman means groups of individuals who cooperate with each other during the interaction.
- 6.
Among the Neo-Gricean linguists, Horn and Levinson have been the key characters in improving Grice’s Cooperative Principle. Levinson (2001) reduced Grice’s four maxims to three and named them the Q-Principle, the I-Principle, and the M-Principle. The Q-Principle states that “[d]o not provide a statement that is informationally weaker than your knowledge of the world allows unless providing an informationally stronger statement would contravene the I-principle. Specifically, select the informationally strongest paradigmatic alternative that is consistent with facts” (Levinson, 2001, p. 76). The second principle is summarised as “‘say as little as necessary’; that is, produce the minimal linguistic information sufficient to achieve your communicational ends” (Levinson, 2001, p. 114). Levinson’s last principle, the M-Principle, is anchored in the first and third submaxims in relation to Grice’s maxim of Manner. However, in contrast to Levinson’s trilogy, Horn substituted two principles (the Q-Principle and the R-Principle) for Grice’s four maxims. Horn’s Q-principle is read as “[m]ake your contribution sufficient” and “[s]ay as much as you can (given R)” (Horn, 1996, p. 385). This principle is a combination of the first and the second submaxims of Grice’s maxim of Manner and the first maxim of Quantity. On the other hand, the R-Principle which is made up of “Grice’s Maxim of Relation, the second Quantity Maxim and the last two submaxims of Manner” (Röhrig, 2010, p. 16) is defined by Horn as “[m]ake your contribution necessary” and “[s]ay no more than you must (given Q)” (1996, p. 385).
- 7.
Returning to Weigand’s Mixed Game Model, I try to show that human beings act and react based on their emotion, experience, needs, background knowledge, social context, and so forth, which might not be properly acknowledged by others.
- 8.
The issue of responsibility is a challenging debate within the realm of indirect reports. The literature in this regard represents conflicting viewpoints. In one stance, the idea is that the responsibly of reporting slurring is on the shoulder of the original speaker (Capone, 2016). However, Capone argues that the reporting speaker can be responsible too if not observing the rules that are the sinews of indirect reporting. In the other stance, such as the one proposed by Wayne Davis (2005), the view is that the reporting speaker is guilty of reporting slurring. I will discuss my own view regarding the reporting of slurring and responsibility in due course (Chap. 5).
- 9.
Opacity, according to Capone (2016, p. 56), “is strictly the consequence of a view of ‘said’ which amounts to interpreting ‘said’ as ‘exactly said’.”
- 10.
“The truth-conditions yielded by a semantic theory should match our ordinary judgments; what’s said is what intuitively seems to be said” (Berg, 2018, p. 104).
- 11.
Capone (2016, p. 24) defines samesaying as “the report and the speech to be reported have some broad content in common.”
- 12.
According to Sperber and Wilson (1986, p. vii): “[h]uman cognitive processes, we argue, are geared to achieving the greatest possible cognitive effect for the smallest possible processing effort.”
- 13.
What I argue here is as a staunch ally of Capone’s argument (2016, p. 8), where he states that “disguised indirect reports usually correspond to statements of feelings, states of mind, attitudes the speaker (the reporter) could not have access to without the experiencer’s giving voice to his/ her emotions, feelings, attitudes, etc.”
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Morady Moghaddam, M. (2019). Sociocognitive vs. Structural Issues. In: The Praxis of Indirect Reports. Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, vol 21. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14269-8_2
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