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A unified account of semantic and pragmatic infelicity
Umeå University, Faculty of Arts, Department of historical, philosophical and religious studies. (Filosofi)
Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden.
2025 (English)In: Synthese, ISSN 0039-7857, E-ISSN 1573-0964, Vol. 205, no 3, article id 115Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

This paper argues for a unified account of semantic and pragmatic infelicity. It is argued that an utterance is infelicitous when it communicates an inconsistent set of propositions, given the context. In cases of semantic infelicity the relevant utterance expresses a set of inconsistent propositions, whereas pragmatic infelicity is a matter of the utterance conflicting with contextual expectations or assumptions. We spell out this view within the standard framework according to which a central aim of communication is to update a body of information shared among the participants. We show that this account explains different kinds of infelicity for both declarative and non-declarative utterances. Further, the account is seen to make correct predictions for a range of cases involving irony, joking, and related non-assertoric utterances.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Springer Nature, 2025. Vol. 205, no 3, article id 115
Keywords [en]
Infelicity, Semantics, Pragmatics, Common ground, Stalnaker
National Category
Philosophy
Research subject
Theoretical Philosophy
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-236082DOI: 10.1007/s11229-025-04954-3ISI: 001434429800001Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85219593289OAI: oai:DiVA.org:umu-236082DiVA, id: diva2:1941912
Funder
Swedish Research Council, 2019-02905Swedish Research Council, 2021-01377Available from: 2025-03-03 Created: 2025-03-03 Last updated: 2025-03-18Bibliographically approved

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Franzén, Nils

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CiteExportLink to record
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Cite
Citation style
  • apa
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  • de-DE
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  • sv-SE
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Output format
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