Abstract
This chapter is about argumentation and connectives. It first gives a general definition of argumentation, as a relation between arguments and conclusions, such that arguments have as properties polarity, force, order, linguistic marking, and logical impairment. The function of an argument is to assign an argumentative orientation to an utterance and make acceptable conclusions that would be unacceptable without the presence of an argument.
Second, the chapter gives a pragmatic description of close meanings connectives, implying causal, inferential, and temporal inferences (parce que, donc, et in French). Linguistic as well as experimental findings are given to support the thesis that causality is linguistically and cognitively a backward relation, and that parce que is a backward causal connective. Finally, causality and argumentation are conceptually and linguistically connected via the analysis of the argumentative use of parce que.
In a nutshell, the main thesis of the chapter is that discourse connectives are devices that convey different levels of meaning, as semantic entailment, explicature, and implicature. For close connectives, their semantic differences do not rest on their conceptual content, but rather on the manner by which basic semantic and argumentative categories are conveyed in discourse, that is, their procedural meaning. French connectives, as parce que, donc, et (“because,” “therefore,” “and”), all include in their meaning a causal relation, the difference being the level at which this relation intervenes. The chapter aims at yielding a precise content to semantic and pragmatic meaning relations triggered by connectives, and, more specifically, the role of entailment, explicature, and implicature in discourse connectives meaning.
This chapter reports some findings of the Swiss National Science Foundation research project N 100012–11382 Lexical and non-lexical pragmatics of causality in French: Theoretical, descriptive and experimental aspects. I thank Cécile Grivaz and Joanna Blochowiak, who wrote their PhD during the project (Grivaz 2012; Blochowiak 2014).
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Notes
- 1.
Literally, d’ailleurs means “from another place.”
- 2.
- 3.
This assumption is strong because subjective predicates, as smart, gorgeous, that is, predicates that can be modified by hedges as very, in my opinion, in a certain manner, a kind of (Moeschler and Reboul 1994, p. 378), have no intrinsic descriptive content by themselves (Ducrot 1983). Their descriptive content is a result of their usage, what Benveniste (1964) called delocutivity.
- 4.
The extensive analysis of all pairs of examples (cause–consequence and consequence–cause order) is given in Blochowiak et al. (2006).
- 5.
Half of the subjects received the instruction “e” for “likely”, “p” for “unlikely,” and half of them the opposite instruction.
- 6.
These experiments have been possible thanks to the collaboration of students and researchers of the L2C2 laboratory at the Institute for Cognitive Science, Lyon. Special thanks to Thomas Castelain, who sampled the data and to Corallie Chevalier, who computed all statistics. I thank Jean-Baptiste van der Henst, who designed the experiments.
- 7.
Note that the conclusion–argument order cannot be reproduced by donc: ?? Les cours de Jacques sont trop difficiles pour des étudiants de BA, donc peu d’étudiants ont réussi leur examen de pragmatique.“ Jacques’ classes are too difficult for BA students, therefore only a few students passed their pragmatics exam.”
- 8.
As in Jean est tombé, donc Marie l’a poussé “John fell; therefore, Mary pushed him.”
- 9.
- 10.
See Moeschler (2013) for a truth-conditional account of entailment, presupposition, implicatures and explicatures.
- 11.
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Appendices
Annex A: Distribution of parce que in the consequence–cause
Annex B: Distribution of donc and et in cause–consequence and consequence–cause order
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Moeschler, J. (2016). Argumentation and Connectives. In: Capone, A., Mey, J. (eds) Interdisciplinary Studies in Pragmatics, Culture and Society. Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, vol 4. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12616-6_26
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