Pragmatics and Processing

Abstract

Abstract Gricean pragmatics has often been criticised for being implausible from a psychological point of view. This line of criticism is never backed up by empirical evidence, but more importantly, it ignores the fact thatGrice never meant to advance a processing theory, in the first place. Taking our lead fromMarr (1982), we distinguish between two levels of explanation: at theW‐level, we are concerned with what agents do and why; at theH‐level, we ask how agents do whatever it is they do. Whereas pragmatics is pitched at theW‐level, processing theories are at theH‐level. This is not to say that pragmatics has no implications for psychology at all, but it is to say that its implications are less direct than is often supposed.

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