Abstract
The interpretation and the indirect reporting of a speaker’s communicative intentions lie at the crossroad between pragmatics, argumentation theory, and forensic linguistics. Since the leading case Masson v. New Yorker Magazine, Inc., in the United States the legal problem of determining the truth of a quotation is essentially equated with the correctness of its indirect reporting, i.e., the representation of the speaker’s intentions. For this reason, indirect reports are treated as interpretations of what the speaker intends to communicate. Theoretical considerations, aimed at establishing the pragmatic meaning of an utterance and differentiating between presumptive and non-presumptive interpretation, are thus interwoven with the practical legal need of distinguishing a correct indirect report from an indirect one or a misquotation. An incorrect report or a misquotation has the dialectical effect of attributing to the misquoted party commitments that he never held, which the latter needs to rebut. This shifting of the burden of persuasion can be increased by using strategically the conflict between the presumptive interpretation of an utterance and the non-presumptive one, namely the different types of pragmatic ambiguity. When an interpreter is confronted with an utterance taken out of its dialogical context, his interpretative process is not guided by the actual context or the speaker’s alleged intention, but rather the most frequent or prototypical dialogical setting or the most typical individual purpose that it could have served to achieve. This presumptive reconstruction can be used to provide a prima facie case that the other party needs to reject. The stronger the interpretative presumptions a speaker needs to rebut, the more effective the misquotation strategy. The conflict between the systematic and the presumptive process of interpretation can be represented as an argumentative mechanism of reconstruction of the individual intention, which allows one to assess the reasonableness of the interpretative reasoning.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
http://factreal.wordpress.com/2010/07/22/full-transcript-videos-usda-shirley-sherrod-naacp-breitbart-foxnews/. Last accessed on 17 Aug 2014.
- 2.
As a matter of fact, the intended effect was clearly perceived by the audience, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/frame_game/2010/07/amen_canard.html
References
Asher, N., & Lascarides, A. (2003). Logics of conversation. Studies in natural language processing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bach, K. (2003). Speech acts and pragmatics. In M. Devitt & R. Hanley (Eds.), Blackwell. Guide to the philosophy of language (pp. 147–167). Oxford: Blackwell.
Bezuidenhout, A. (1997). Pragmatics, semantic under determination and the referential/attributive distinction. Mind, 106(423), 375–407.
Blair Edlow, R. (1977). Galen on language and ambiguity. Leiden: E.J. Brill.
Boller, P. (1967). Quotemanship. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press.
Burton-Roberts, N. (2006). Cancellation and intention. Newcastle Working Papers in Linguistics, 12–13, 1–12.
Capone, A. (2003). Theories of presuppositions and presuppositional clitics. In P. Kühnlein, H. Rieser, & H. Zeevat (Eds.), Perspectives on dialogue in the new millennium (pp. 111–133). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Capone, A. (2009). Are explicatures cancellable? Toward a theory of the speaker’s intentionality. Intercultural Pragmatics, 6(1), 55–83.
Capone, A. (2010). On the social practice of indirect reports (further advances in the theory of pragmemes). Journal of Pragmatics, 42, 377–391.
Capone, A. (2011). The attributive/referential distinction, pragmatics, modularity of mind and modularization. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 31(2), 153–186.
Capone, A. (2013). The pragmatics of indirect reports and slurring. In A. Capone et al. (Eds.), Perspectives on linguistic pragmatics. Perspectives in pragmatics, philosophy and psychology 2 (pp. 153–183). Berlin: Springer.
Carston, R. (1997). Enrichment and loosening: Complementary processes in deriving the proposition expressed? In E. Rolf (Ed.), Pragmatik (pp. 103–127). Wiesbaden: Springer.
Carston, R. (2002). Thoughts and utterances. The pragmatics of explicit communication. Oxford: Blackwell.
Copi, I., & Cohen, C. (1990). Introduction to logic (8th ed.). New York: Macmillan.
Crothers, E. (1979). Paragraph structure inference. Norwood: Ablex.
De Grazia, M. (1995). Sanctioning voice: Quotation marks, the abolition of torture, and the fifth amendment. In M. Woodmansee & P. Jaszi (Eds.), The construction of authorship: Textual appropriation in law and literature (pp. 281–302). Durham & London: Duke University Press.
Ducrot, O. (1972). Dire et ne pas dire. Paris: Hermann.
Ducrot, O., & Anscombre, J. C. (1986). Argumentativité et informativité. In M. Michel (Ed.), De la métaphysique à la rhétorique (pp. 79–93). Bruxelles: Éditions de l'Université de Bruxelles.
Engel, M. (1980). Analyzing informal fallacies. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.
Grice, P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In D. Davidson & G. Harman (Eds.), The logic of grammar (pp. 64–75). Encino: Dickenson.
Grimes, J. (1975). The thread of discourse. The Hague: Mouton.
Grosz, B., & Sidnert, C. (1986). Attention, intentions, and the structure of discourse. Computational. Linguistics, 12(3), 175–204.
Hobbs, J. (1979). Coherence and coreference. Cognitive Science, 3, 67–90.
Hobbs, J. (1985). On the coherence and structure of discourse. Report No. CSLI-85-37. Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University.
Jaszczolt, K. (1999). Discourse, beliefs and intentions. Oxford: Elsevier.
Kaltenbach, R. (1992). Fabricated quotes and the actual malice standard: Masson v. New Yorker magazine. Catholic University Law Review, 41, 745–777.
Kempson, R. (1973). Presupposition: A problem for linguistic theory. Transactions of the Philological Society, 72(1), 29–54.
Lascarides, A., & Asher, N. (1991). Discourse relations and defeasible knowledge. In Proceedings to the 29th annual meeting of the association of computational linguistics (ACL91), Berkeley USA (pp. 55–63). Stroudsburg: Association for Computational Linguistics.
Macagno, F. (2008). Dialectical relevance and dialogical context in Walton’s pragmatic theory. Informal Logic, 28(2), 102–128.
Macagno, F. (2012). Presumptive reasoning in interpretation. Implicatures and conflicts of presumptions. Argumentation, 26(2), 233–265.
Macagno, F., & Damele, G. (2013). The dialogical force of implicit premises: Presumptions in enthymemes. Informal Logic, 33(3), 365–393.
Macagno, F., & Walton, D. (2013). Implicatures as forms of argument. In A. Capone et al. (Eds.), Perspectives on pragmatics and philosophy (pp. 203–224). Berlin/New York: Springer.
Macagno, F., & Walton, D. (2014). Emotive language in argumentation. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Macagno, F., & Zavatta, B. (2014). Reconstructing metaphorical meaning. Argumentation, 28(4), 453–488.
Oswald, S., & Lewinski, M. (2013). When and how do we deal with straw men? A normative and cognitive pragmatic account. Journal of Pragmatics, 59, 164–177.
Paglieri, F. (2007). No more charity, please! Enthymematic parsimony and the pitfall of benevolence. In C. Tindale & H. Hansen (Eds.), Dissensus and the search for common ground. OSSA proceedings (pp. 1–26). Windsor: University of Windsor.
Raudenbush, E. (1991). Variations on a theme: Application of Masson v. New Yorker Magazine, Inc. to a spectrum of misquotation libel cases. Washington & Lee Law Review, 48, 1441–1475.
Recanati, F. (2004). ‘What is said’ and the semantics/pragmatics distinction. In C. Bianchi (Ed.), The semantics/pragmatics distinction (pp. 45–64). Stanford: CSLI Publications, Stanford University.
Rescher, N. (1977). Dialectics: A controversy-oriented approach to the theory of knowledge. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Rigotti, E. (2005). Congruity theory and argumentation. Studies in Communication Sciences, (Special Issue), 75–96.
Rocci, A. (2005). Connective predicates in monologic and dialogic argumentation. Studies in Communication Sciences, (Special Issue), 97–118.
Siegel, P. (2014). Communication law in America. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
Soames, S. (2002). Beyond rigidity: The unfinished semantic agenda of naming and necessity. New York: Oxford University Press.
Solan, L., & Tiersma, P. (2005). Speaking of crime. The language of criminal justice. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press.
Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1986). Relevance. Oxford: Blackwell.
Stevenson, C. L. (1937). The emotive meaning of ethical terms. Mind, 46, 14–31.
Stevenson, C. L. (1944). Ethics and language. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Trosborg, A. (1995). Interlanguage pragmatics: Requests, complaints, and apologies. The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter.
Van Eemeren, F., & Grootendorst, R. (1984). Speech acts in argumentative discussions: A theoretical model for the analysis of discussions directed towards solving conflicts of opinion. Dordrecht: Foris.
van Eemeren, F., & Grootendorst, R. (2004). A systematic theory of argumentation: The pragma-dialectical approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Van Laar, J. A. (2003). The dialectic of ambiguity: A contribution to the study of argumentation. Ph.D. dissertation. Groningen: University of Groningen.
Vanderveken, D. (2002). Universal grammar and speech act theory. In D. Vanderveken & S. Kubo (Eds.), Essays in speech act theory (pp. 25–62). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Walton, D. (1989). Informal logic. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Walton, D. (1996). Fallacies arising from ambiguity. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Walton, D. (1998). The new dialectic. Conversational contexts of argument. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Walton, D. (2000). New dialectical rules for ambiguity. Informal Logic, 20(3), 261–274.
Walton, D. (2006). Fundamentals of critical argumentation. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Walton, D., & Krabbe, E. (1995). Commitment in dialogue. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Walton, D., & Macagno, F. (2007). Types of dialogue, dialectical relevance, and textual congruity. Anthropology & Philosophy, 8(1–2), 101–121.
Walton, D., & Macagno, F. (2009). Reasoning from classification and definition. Argumentation, 23, 81–107.
Walton, D., & Macagno, F. (2010). Wrenching from context: The manipulation of commitments. Argumentation, 24(3), 283–317.
Walton, D., & Macagno, F. (2011). Quotations and presumptions – Dialogical effects of misquotations. Informal Logic, 31(1), 27–55.
Walton, D., Reed, C., & Macagno, F. (2008). Argumentation schemes. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Wieland, N. (2013). Indirect reports and pragmatics. In A. Capone, F. Piparoand, & M. Carapezza (Eds.), Perspectives on pragmatics and philosophy (pp. 389–411). Dordrecht: Springer.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Macagno, F. (2016). Reporting and Interpreting Intentions in Defamation Law. In: Capone, A., Kiefer, F., Lo Piparo, F. (eds) Indirect Reports and Pragmatics. Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21395-8_28
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21395-8_28
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-21394-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-21395-8
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)