Abstract
According to Vološinov (1971), there is a tension between two indirect discourse practices; one in which the reported message’s integrity is preserved and the boundaries between the main message and the embedded reported message are formally marked and one in which such boundaries are dissolved as the reporting context allows the reporting speaker to intrude to a greater extent and transform the message by stylistic interpolations. This tension is clearly resolved, in the context of this chapter on indirect reports, through the recognition of pragmatic principles assigning default interpretations (according to which the boundaries between the reporting message and the reported message are clearly visible and the reported speaker’s voice prevails at least within the embedded message), while allowing context to create priorities sometimes overriding the default interpretations and making the otherwise costly violations of pragmatic principles worthwhile by facilitating the information flow and subordinating it to the exigencies of the embedding context.
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Notes
- 1.
For example, shifts from serious to non-serious or depictive uses.
- 2.
This position is somewhat reminiscent of Seymour’s (1994) treatment of indirect reports, in which reference to a translation of the reported sentence is explicitly incorporated in the semantics of indirect reports.
- 3.
Davidson, with his formidable method proved that, indeed, indirect reports are contexts for opacity and, in a sense, the considerations about the opacity of belief reports should be considered consequential on the considerations on indirect (and direct) reports, as noted by Wettstein (2016). This chapter on slurs is particularly important for the purpose of vindicating Davidson’s assertions, as indirect reports containing slurs in the that-clause are particularly problematic. This is a case in which a reporting speaker would not replace (in the sense that he is prohibited) a non-slurring expression with a slur or a slur with its neutral counterpart.
- 4.
Of course, Devitt (1996) has made this claim long before Wieland.
- 5.
It is fair to say that this discussion was broached by Cappelen and Lepore (1997).
- 6.
This clearly does not work with privative adjectives as in ‘I bought a toy gun’.
- 7.
Another example that goes against Wieland is the following. A rather misogynous man may commit himself to the belief ‘I love beautiful women’; however, he may not take himself to be represented correctly by the sentence ‘I love women’ (given that he may have many prejudices against women).
- 8.
Davis (2005) would say that the proposition in the that-clause of the indirect report need not coincide with the proposition in (12) because they have different constituent structure.
- 9.
If belief reports and, consequently, indirect reports are thought to be structured (in that they are reports of structured propositions), it would be important to give some thought to structure before saying that two utterances are pragmatically equivalent, The minimum that should be said, to predicate equivalence, is that two propositions should have the same structure.
- 10.
Baldwin (1982, 273) writes: “Davidson argues against such quotational theories and thereby implies that his paratactic theory is not a quotational one. But he treats quotation as abbreviated spelling out, and if, more sensibly, one treats quotation marks as a demonstrative device, and one treats the symbols within the quotation marks as a display of that which is referred to by the demonstrative, then the difference between paratactic and quotational theories becomes one largely of notation”.
- 11.
This position is somewhat reminiscent of Seymour’s (1994) treatment of indirect reports, in which reference to a translation of the reported sentence is explicitly incorporated in the semantics of indirect reports.
- 12.
Kennedy (2002, 19) writes about the word ‘negro’: ‘nigger’ is an ugly, evil, irredeemable word. He cites someone considering the word “the nuclear bomb of racial epithets” (p. 61).
- 13.
Anderson and Lepore (2013) write that “Indirect reports and other attitudinal inscriptions fail to attribute slurring to whomever they report since the offense of the reporter “screens off”, so to speak, the offense of whoever is being reported. This position is interesting, but needless to say, it would need greater justification.
- 14.
This position is somewhat reminiscent of Seymour’s (1994) treatment of indirect reports, in which reference to a translation of the reported sentence is explicitly incorporated in the semantics of indirect reports.
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Capone, A. (2016). Indirect Reports and Slurring. In: The Pragmatics of Indirect Reports . Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, vol 8. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41078-4_7
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