ABSTRACT
You may have noticed as you’ve been reading this book that the rationalistic/ psychological motivation fence is one on which I’ve been sitting a little uncomfortably. In the introductory section of each chapter (Chapter 8 apart), I’ve used a simple example to draw attention to an area in which pragmaticists have made a good deal of progress. In the second section, I’ve approached the area from an explanatory perspective. Typically, this explanatory approach has been rationalistic – we’ve assumed that speakers are rational beings with ends in mind and that they use language so as to bring those ends about. And then in the third section of each chapter I’ve shared more extensive real world data in a way that I hope has helped to set the rationalistic account in a wider social context. Sometimes you may have felt that this more empirical approach shows up the limitations of the rationalistic assumptions we’ve been exploring. So what does rationalistic pragmatics overlook?
