A A R H U S U N I V E R S I T Y 1 Scandinavian Institute Ole Togeby, Evidence in text interpretation...

A A R H U S U N I V E R S I T Y

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Scandinavian Institute

Ole Togeby, Evidence in text interpretation The notion of evidence: Jan. 19-20

Evidence in text interpretation

Ole Togeby


Aarhus University


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Definitions

In relation to text linguistics and discourse analysis there are two types of ‘evidence’ to be considered: 1) A pieces of evidence (a proof) in the scientific research

ascertaining the truth of the theories and descriptions about the scientific object, viz. how texts are made and interpreted.

2) The experience that members of the audience have of the meaning of a text exposed to them as evident ( = obvious).

In this paper I will deal with them both and with the intricate relation between them.


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Definitions

This distinction between ‘evidence’ (= proof) and ‘evident’ (= obvious) is a version of the basic

body-mind problem: how can for the body cause perception and cognition in the mind, and how can intentions in the mind cause body movement

Proofs are material and objective; Obviousness is phenomenological and subjective. So a common description of the two types of evidence is in a

way a discussion of the body mind problem.


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Definitions

It looks like the adjective evident normally is used in the sense ‘obvious’

The Danish adjective evident is in ’Den Danske Ordbog’ defined as: … which is an immediate fact that one need not argue for or prove,

obvious, manifest

In the Thesaurus in Encyclopaedia Britannica evident is defined as: ‘evident implies presence of visible signs that lead one to a definite

conclusion’, or ‘clear to the vision or understanding’.


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Definitions

And the noun evidence is normally used in the sense ‘proof’.

The noun evidence is in the English dictionary defined as a) an outward sign : indication b) something that furnishes proof : testimony; specifically :

something legally submitted to a tribunal to ascertain the truth of a matter.

In Anglo-Saxon law the noun evidence thus has the sense ‘means of proof’


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Definitions

If something is evident, it is manifest, obvious and grasped immediately and intuitively

The opposite of something being evident (= obvious) is

‘something being understood by inference, ratiocination and reflexion’

(following Kant we could call it: diskursivt, which means that ‘something is understood in a process of separate propositional steps as in a discourse’).


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Definitions

Evidence in text interpretation may thus be defined as:

any manifest textual cue that may contribute to a sudden and intuitive experience of the meaning of a text being evident.


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Definitions

‘Evidence’ in text linguistics and discourse analysis may be defined as

a manifest indication (or proof) of the fact that a theory or description of text interpretation is true.


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II. Theses

My thesis about what is evident in scientific research is the following:

There is normally no evidence (= proofs) in text linguistics or discourse analysis research, because the object of investigation is the process of interpretation running in the minds of members of the audience to a (written or spoken) text, and as a phenomenological and subjective fact, it is not a demonstrable public evidence.

But in describing interpretation of jokes and puns the laughter at the punch-line will furnish the evidence (= proof) that some sudden revealing interpretation has taken place in the mind of the members of the audience.


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Theses

My theses about what is evident (obvious) in text interpretation are the following:

1) The interpretation of an image is evident because it is obvious, instantaneous and intuitive; the interpretation of a text is normally not, because it goes off incrementally in time, proceeds by means of inference, and leads to a not provable proposition.


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Theses

2) In interpreting certain texts, viz. jokes, puns, short stories and detective novels, the members of the audience, when hearing the punch-line, will have an aha-experience that is immediate, intuitive and - evident.


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Theses

3) What is evident when reading the punch-line, is not only the holistic interpretation of the meaning of the text, but also that members of the audience realize that they have been led astray by the speaker into what turns out to be a blind alley, and they have to revise all what they have understood until then.


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IIIA. Inferential text interpretation

First thesis about what is evident (obvious) in text interpretation:

1) The interpretation of an image is evident because it is obvious, instantaneous and in-tuitive; the interpretation of a text is normally not, because it goes off incrementally in time, proceeds by means of inference, and leads to a not provable proposition.


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A Proof of Pythagoras' Theorem The area of each of the four trangles is:A_t = ab/2so the area of the four triangles is 2abThe length of the edges of the small square in the centre is (b-a) so the area is:A_s = (b-a)2A_s = b2 - 2ab + a2The area of the complete figure is therefore:A= c2 = 4 * A_t + A_shence:c2 = b2 + a2

A geometric proof of Pythagoras’ theorem (a2 + b2 = c2) is typical an evidence, but is not at all evident:


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A visual illustration of the same theorem is not an evidence, but is highly evident:


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Inferential text interpretation

The regular interpretation of a text is not evident (= obvious) because it is an incremental and ratiocinative (consciously or unconsciously propositionally inferential) process of building a mental model of the situation talked about in the text.

The ratiocination consists of 1) determining what is said from what is pronounced, 2) determining what is communicated by what is said


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If we take the oral situation as basic, we can distinguish between: 1) what is pronounced (known as what is explicit) in

uttering a text, 2) what is said by what is pronounced (called the

explicature or the coded meaning), and 3) what is implicitly communicated by what is said (both

presupposition and implicature).


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On another dimension we can distinguish between a) information that the speaker mentions, and takes for

granted, in order to make new information about these known things accessible for the audience

b) information that the speaker states as new in order to make the audience take it in

It gives six type of information: names, predicates, what is named (the reference), what is

predicated, what is presupposed and the implicature.


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IIIB. Types of information

Information Taken for granted Stated

What is pronounced

Names (definite noun phrases)

Predicates (verb phrases, adjectives, adverbials)

What is said in the proposition

What is named (the re/cognizable reference (= an element in the mental model)

What is predicated as relevant to the audience

What is communicated

What is presupposed by the utterance of the proposition

The implicature of the speaker’s claim of relevance of the predicated information


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Terminological note

The verb imply and the noun implication is used about entailments (logically necessary conclusive

information). The fact that the child was born blind implies ‘that he was and had

always been lacking the power to see’.

The Verb implicate and the noun implicature is used about pragmatically generated, but logically

cancellable information. The answer “-There is a garage round the corner” to the car driver’s remark “-I am out of petrol” implicates that ’you can probably get some petrol there’.


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Terminological note

In Grice’s original article Logic and Conversation 1967 the term conventional implicature is the name for ’what is presupposed’, and what I here call implicature Grice calls conversational implicature. Grice’s terminology did not catch on, however, so I will here use Levinson’s terminology:

Presuppositions are conventional, semantic and triggered by lexical items and syntactic constructions when they are uttered in a proposition.

Implicatures are conversational, pragmatic and triggered by the guarantee of relevance for the current purpose of talk exchange, given by the utterance of a speech act.


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Example: The Blue-eyed Boy

‘When I was in Vienna twenty years ago,’ she began, ‘a pretty boy with big blue eyes made a great stir there by dancing on a rope blindfolded. He danced with wonderful grace and skill, and the blindfolding was genuine, the cloth being tied around his eyes by a person out of the audience. His performance was the great sensation of the season, and he was sent for to dance before the Emperor and Empress, the archdukes and archduchesses, and the court.


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The Blue-eyed Boy

The great oculist, Professor Heimholz, was present. He had been sent for by the Emperor, since everybody was discussing the problem of clairvoyance.

But in the end of the show he rose up and called out: “Your Majesty,” he said, in great agitation, “and your Imperial Highnesses, this is all humbug, and a cheat.”

‘ “It cannot be humbug,” said the court oculist, “I have myself tied the cloth around the boy’s eyes most conscientiously.”


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The Blue-eyed Boy

‘ “It is all humbug and a cheat," the great professor indignantly insisted. “That child was born blind.” ’

Isak Dinesen 1934: “The Deluge at Nordeney” in Seven Gothic Tales


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IIIC. What is said

What is said ( the explicature) is defined as follows: What is said is information about the stated relations

between named things, information that the audience extract from what is pronounced and its context, in order to grasp the meaning of the whole proposition that can be ascribed truth value.

This extraction takes place solely on the basis of knowledge of the grammatical rules and the lexicon of the language


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What is said This extraction of what is said from what is

pronounced consists of four operations: The audience must: 1) recognize what the pronounced names (np’s and

adverbials) refer to, 2) disambiguate (monosemiate) the lexical items and the

syntactic constructions, 3) enrich the meaning of the proposition by the information

omitted by ellipsis, and 4) extract the logical entailment (the implications) of the

proposition that are necessary for the building of a mental model of the situation


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What is said

1) Recognition of what the pronounced names refer to.

In When I was in Vienna twenty years ago,’ she began,

the audience must recognize that I (like she) refers to ’Miss Malin Nat-og-Dag’, and twenty years ago refers to ’the year 1815’ (because it is said in 1835).


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What is said

2) Disambiguation of lexical items and syntactical constructions.

The readers have to decide that sensation, in this context, means ‘a sensational event’, and not a sort of ‘feeling’ or ‘sense’; sensation as a lexical item can have both meanings.

In the construction by dancing on a rope blindfolded it has to be recognized that it is ‘the dancing boy’ that is ‘blindfolded’, and not ‘the rope’ although this attachment pattern is possible too, compare with: by dancing on a rope fastened to a tree


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What is said

3) enrichment of the meaning of the proposition by the information omitted by ellipsis

He danced with wonderful grace and skill has to be enriched with the information ‘on the rope’; it has been left out by ellipsis.


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What is said

4) Extraction of the logical entailments (implications) of the proposition that are necessary for the building of a mental model of the situation.

From the fact ‘that the child was born blind’ the readers have to extract the implication ‘that he was and had always been lacking the power to see’


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What is said

Determining what is said from what is pronounced, involves four distinct processes: a) determining the reference of referring expressions b) disambiguation of lexical items c) enrichment of meaning of elliptic expressions d) extraction of necessary logical entailments of the

propositions Neither of them are evident, they are incremental and

inferential (ratiocinative).


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IIID. What is presupposed


What is pronounced




What is named (the recognizable reference)




The implicature of the speaker’s claim of rele-vance of the predicated information


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What is presupposed

The next step in the inferential text interpretation is to determine what is communicated by what is said in uttering the speech act in a specific situational setting.

It involves for members of the audience: a) accepting and integrating in the mental model what is

presupposed, and b) inferring what is implicated.


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What is presupposed

Presupposition (called a conventional implicature by Grice) is defined as:

What is presupposed is the pieces of information that the speaker by lexical and syntactic choices signals to the audience that they must take as given (and incorporate in their mental model if it isn’t already there) in order to understand what is said as part of existing mental model of the situation talked about.

What falls outside the scope of the sentential negation.


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What is presupposed

Normally what is presupposed is signalled by lexical items, e.g. all verbs of transition (perfective verbs) presuppose that the previous state was in force when the transition sets in:

In But in the end of the show he rose up and called out: It is presupposed ‘that he was sitting’ when ‘he rose up’,

although it has not been said explicitly. But this is trivial and uncontroversial and is not noticed as something it is necessary to incorporate.


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What is presupposed A well known example of presupposition is:

When did you stop beating your wife? In this example your wife presupposes that the

addressee is married, stop presupposes that the process or activity was in force when it stopped; When presupposes that the information in the rest of the sentence is true. If the addressee hasn’t stopped beating his wife, has not ever beaten her, is not married, or is not male, what is presupposed is not given. This is called bullying, which is a sort of presupposition failure. (Harder & Kock 1976)


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What is presupposed

It is often said that the verb know presupposes the truth of what is known. When uttering the sentence

The professor knew that the boy was born blind the speaker takes for granted that it is a fact ‘that the boy was

born blind’. And with the sentence: The court oculist did not know that the boy was born blind it is also taken for granted ‘that the boy was born blind’. In

this way it is a simple test for what is presupposed that it is outside the scope of the sentential negation.


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What is presupposed

Some scholars have called it presupposition that the speaker uses pronouns and ellipses when the sentence is uttered in a situation in which these formulations are sufficient for recognition of the reference, e.g. that the Emperor and Empress are presupposed information. I would prefer to call (definite or indefinite) referring expressions names (of entities in the mental model).


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What is presupposed

Conjunctions and adverbials can presuppose information too, e.g. but presupposes that there is an opposition between the preceding and the subsequent word:

The waiter is negro but well-groomed. presupposes that there is an opposition between ‘being negro’

and ‘being well-groomed’ – an example of bullying which reveals the prejudice of the speaker, a controversial prejudice which is also forced on the audience; they cannot react against it, unless they impolitely interrupt the flow of information by discussing something that is not relevant for the message of the utterance.


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If information bullied on the audience is neither given nor controversial, the result is only confusion:

• Den kvinde, der blev fundet i Fredericia centrum sent fredag aften, er nu identificeret. Hun er en 28-årig tysker, der kommer fra en institution i Hamborg. Den retarderede kvinde blev fundet i en rundkørsel ved Norgesgade ved 23-tiden fredag aften, men hun har intet sprog.

• Politiken 8.4.2003 I side 6.

• The woman found i Fredericia Centre late Friday night, has been identified. She is a 28 -year-old German from Hamburg. The mentally retarded woman was found in a roundabout near Norgesgade about 11 o’clock Friday night, but she has no language


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What is presupposed

Here it is presupposed that there is an opposition between ’to be found in a round about’ and ’to have no language’, a statement that is neither given nor controversial and must be looked on as a communication failure.

(It is probably the case that the sub-editor of the paper has cut the last sentence which could have been: så man kan ikke finde ud af hvordan hun er kommet frem til rundkørslen i Fredericia. (So it was impossible to find out how she has come to the round about in Fredericia)


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IIIE. Implicature


What is pronounced




What is named (the recognizable reference)




The implicature of the speaker’s claim of rele-vance of the predicated information


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Implicature

What is implicated (the implicature) Grice’s conversational implicature, which I suggest called

underforståelse in Danish, is defined: What is implicated is the unspoken information that the

members of the audience have licence to infer from what is said in order to see the relevance for them against the background of the current situation. By uttering the speech act the speaker issues a guarantee for the relevance for them of what is said, for the accepted purpose of talk exchange.


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Implicature

Optimal relevance is achieved if what is said is the shortest formulation of the truth and the whole truth about the situation talked about, such as required for the accepted purpose of talk exchange.

A: - I am out of petrol. B: - There is a garage round the corner

Example from Grice 1975

By B’s speech act it is guaranteed that it provides a piece of information relevant for A in the current situation, and that it is the whole truth. A can now infer that she presumably can get some petrol there, but that B does not know for certain (otherwise he would have said so).


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Implicature

The truth of the implicature is – contrary to what holds for presupposition – cancellable; B can cancel the implicature ‘that you can have petrol at the garage’ by adding:

B: - but perhaps it is not open


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Implicature

I am passing through the customs (where I can import up to two liters of spirits) carrying a bag with six bottles of aqua vitae. When asked by the customs officer I declare:

I have two bottles of aqua vitae in my bag. That is not a blatant lie, because if I have six bottles it is a

logical implication that I have two too. It is in fact the truth and nothing but the truth. But it is not the

whole truth, and that (the whole truth relevant for accepted purpose of talk exchange) is exactly what I have issued a guarantee for when uttering my remark.

So I am with justice accused for cheating (but not for lying).


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Implicature

Peter: “-Is George a good sailor?” Mary: “-All the English are good sailors”.

Wilson and Sperber (1987)

From Mary’s speech act it is inferred ’that George is a good sailor’, presupposed ’that George is English’. It is a valid deductive modus ponens syllogism:

All the English are good sailors {George is English} . {George is a good sailor}


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Implicature

I cannot understand Mary’s reply in this way, because it is obviously false that all the English are good sailors. So I will take Mary’s remark to be ironical and mean:

‘I don’t know, but probably not’.

It is false that all the English are good sailors {George is English} .

{It cannot be concluded that George is a good sailor}


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Implicature

Deidre Wilson has in personal communication explained to me that English people cannot understand Mary’s reply ironically, although it is obviously false. And consequently they will take the meaning to be: ‘George is a good sailor’ and ‘England deserves a good navy’.

But then I wander: Why doesn’t Mary just say: “Yes!”.


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Implicature

Many remarkable examples will show both presupposition and implicature; in the example:

The waiter is negro but well-groomed it is, as mentioned, presupposed that there is an

opposition between for a waiter ‘to be negro’ and ‘well-groomed’, but it is at the same time implicated:

’and therefore we can have our lunch at this restaurant’.


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Implicature

It is an implication that when the speaker introduces an opposition by means of the word but, the conclusion is drawn from the second of the pieces of information coordinated by but. The person who says:

The waiter is well-groomed but negro implicates: ‘and therefore we cannot have our lunch at this

restaurant’.


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Implicature

Implicatures always involve some kind of reasoning, the implicature being either the premise or the conclusion, sometimes both: In the example about the waiter the implicature is the conclusion. Here is an example where the non-trivial implicature is the premise: Two university teachers meet in the corridor:

A: - Where are you going? B: - To the departmental meeting. A: - But, it’s only for the research-active staff.

Example from Carston 2002


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Implicature

departmental meetings are only for the research-active staff.

{You are not research-active} . {You have no need to go there} Here one premise is implicated, and the conclusion is

the implicature of the word but.


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Implicature

In the case of A: - But, it’s only for the research-active staff the implicature is offensive and insulting. In other cases implicatures are naïve and symptomatic; in a book with children’s scribbling one can read:

Den første tand kommer I munden The first tooth comes in the mouth. The reasoning about the implicature is something like:

The first tooth comes in the mouth. {the other teeth come somewhere else, e.g. on the knee

{The First tooth is the best (working) tooth}


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Implicature

On a box with Italian lasagne it could be read:Denne lasagne er forkogt. Den skal ikke koges i 20 minutter i letsaltet vand. (This lasagne is parboiled. It shall not be boiled for 20 minutes in lightly salted water) .

Here it is implicated that ’it is to be boiled for 20 minutes in fully salted water’. If the lasagne should not be boiled at all, the formulation

should have been: It need not be boiled. The actual formulation is not the shortest and most economical

possible for the current purpose of talk exchange.


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Implicature

Conclusion: Implicatures are not evident; they are inferential and certainly not obvious

(and neither an indication of truth). No other part of the inferential text interpretation process yield evidence,

neither determining what is said from what is pronounced (which involves recognition of references, disambiguation of the lexical items

and syntactic constructions, enrichment of ellipses, and extraction of logical entailment) ,

nor determining what is communicated by what is said. To understand the message of a text is not evidential experience, but hard

inferential work in order to build a mental model of the situation talked about.


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Implicature

The inferential work does not consist of a deductive syllogism. We do not reason: A says U, U has the meaning ‘X’, Conclusion: A means ‘X’.

because U (as all other expressions) is highly ambiguous. The only possible way of reasoning is:

A says U, If I mean ‘X’, I say U; Conclusion: A probably means ‘X’.

That is an abductive hypothesis construction, and the conclusion is not logically valid, but so much the more relevant.


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Implicature

The second part of the first thesis about text interpretation is:

The interpretation of a text is normally not evident, because it goes off incrementally in time, proceeds by means of inference, and leads to a not provable proposition.


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IV. Punch-lines

My second thesis about text interpretation is:

In interpreting certain texts, viz. jokes, puns, short stories and detective novels, the members of the audience, when hearing the punch-line, will have an aha-experience that is immediate, intuitive and –

evident.


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Punch-lines

In texts such as jokes, puns, short stories and detective novels, the speaker has seductively (but not lying) implicated certain trivial but untrue state of affaires, that members of the audience more or less unconsciously have integrated in their mental model of the situation talked about. These seducing implicatures are called the decoys.

In the last sentence but one members of the audience realize that they have met a dead end. They cannot integrate all information they have been told and hold as true, in one consistent mental model. There are self-contradictions.


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Punch-lines

Then, at the punch-line, they are forced to make a reversal (peripeti) in their mental model building, to abandon their first interpretation and reinterpret the whole story.

When hearing the punch-line, they will have an aha-experience of what, contrary to what they thought, is the truth about the situation talked about, an experience that is immediate, intuitive and - evident.

Simon Borchmann 2005


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Decoys - Dead endsDead ends – Evidential reversal

‘When I was in Vienna twenty years ago,’ she began, ‘a pretty boy with big blue eyes made a great stir there by dancing on a rope blindfolded. He danced with wonderful grace and skill, and the blindfolding was genuine, the cloth being tied around his eyes by a person out of the audience. His performance was the great sensation of the season, and he was sent for to dance before the Emperor and Empress, the archdukes and archduchesses, and the court.


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The Blue-eyed Boy

The great oculist, Professor Heimholz, was present. He had been sent for by the Emperor, since everybody was discussing the problem of clairvoyance.

But in the end of the show he rose up and called out: “Your Majesty,” he said, in great agitation, “and your Imperial Highnesses, this is all humbug, and a cheat.”this is all humbug, and a cheat.”

“It cannot be humbug,” said the court oculist, “I have myself tied the cloth around the boy’s eyes most conscientiously.”


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The Blue-eyed Boy

“It is all humbug and a cheatIt is all humbug and a cheat," the great professor indignantly insisted. “That child was born blind.” ’

Isak Dinesen 1934: “The Deluge at Nordeney” in Seven Gothic Tales


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Punch-lines

What is evident when reading the punch-line, is not only the holistic interpretation of the meaning of the text, but also that members of the audience realize that they have been led astray by the speaker into what turns out to be a blind alley, and they have had a revelation about the true state of affaires.

That is, first of all, a social experience of being fooled, or rather deluded by the speaker. The reaction to that and to the sudden revelation is involuntary laughter. So laughter is a manifest evidence of some special interpretation going on in the minds of members of the audience.


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VA. Evidence in text linguistics

And back to my first thesis about text linguistics: In describing interpretation of jokes and puns the laughter at

the punch-line will furnish the evidence (= proof) that some sudden revealing interpretation has taken place in the mind of the members of the audience.

The undeniable fact that people laugh at jokes is an evidence (a manifest indication) that the text linguistic description outlined here is true.


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Evidence in text linguistics

You don’t laugh at a recipe, at the news in TV, or if you suddenly realize that someone has been lying to you; but you do laugh at good jokes and puns. So the laughter is an evidence of the reality of

decoys, dead ends evident reinterpretation

in the process of interpreting jokes and other texts with punch lines.


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Evidence in text linguistics

And the absence of laughter in interpretation of recipes, TV news and blatant lies is an indication of the truth of the theory of regular text interpretation as involving :

1) determining what is said from what is pronounced, 2) determining what is communicated by what is said but not involving realizing that you have been

deluded by seducing implicatures that function as decoys and dead ends.


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VB. The body-mind problem

body-mind problem: how can the body cause perception and cognition in the

mind, and how can intentions in the mind cause body movement

When people laugh at jokes it is an evidence ( = proof) of one person (by false implicatures) causing another person not only to have an evident experience of being fooled, but also to make body movements, viz. to laugh.


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The body-mind problem

So the theory of inferential text interpretation – as sketched above - is a part of a theory of the relation, connection and communication between the body and the mind.

Another part of the explanation consists in a description of delusion. We not only realize that we are deluded by the speaker, but we also realize that it is on purpose (of the speaker) that we experience this pleasant revelation of being deluded. So the speaker has controlled my body movements and in that way amused me.


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References

Aristoteles (350 BC): Poetics Borchmann, Simon, 2005: Funktionel tekstteori og fiktivt fortællende tekster med refleksiv funktion,

København

Bergler, Edmond 1956: Laughter and the Sense of Humor, New York Carston, Robyn 2002: Thoughts and Utterances. The Pragmatics of Explicit Communication, Oxford:

Blackwell Publishing. Freud, Sigmund (1906) 1979: Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten, Frankfurt am Main Grice, H.P. (1967) 1975: ”Logic and conversation” in Cole, Peter, and Jerry Morgan, 1975: Syntax and

Semantics, vol 3, Speech Acts, New York: Academic Press Peter Harder & Christian Kock 1976: The Theory of Presupposition Failure, København: Akademisk

Forlag Kant, Immanuel (1781) 1996: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Frankfurt am Main Koestler, Arthur 1964: The Act of Creation, London Togeby, Ole 2003: Fungerer denne sætning? Funktionel dansk sproglære, København Zijderveld, A. 1976: Humor und Gesellschaft. Eine Soziologie des Humors und des Lachens, Graz Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1969: On Certainty, London Yule, George 1996: Pragmatics, Oxford


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A case studyBLADR VIDERE!

Der står noget meget mere spændende på næste side.

Havde du bare gjort, som vi bad om.

Så ville du ikke have anet noget om de nye Volkswagen modeller med DK-pakker. Du ville ikke have vidst, at en DK-pakke er en vifte af originalt, fabriksmonteret ekstraudstyr. F.eks. til en Golf. Den omfatter Climatic aircondition, justerbar varme i forsæderne, opvarmelige skrinklerdyser og forlygte sprinklere. Havde du bare bladret videre, ville du have troet, at den slags luksus fordyrer en Golf med mange tusinde kroner. Det er jo ikke gratis at køre på 1. klasse. Især ikke her i landet. Så en merpris på 20.000 kr. må siges at være rimelig, ikke? Men nu er du nået så langt, at du godt kan få sandheden at vide. Vores tyske leverandør har pålagt os at sælge hele pakken for 5.000,-. Det er 15.000 kr. lige ned i foret. Eller lige ud af vinduet – alt efter hvilken side man ser det fra.


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• BLADR VIDERE! • Der står noget meget mere spændende på

næste side. • Havde du bare gjort, som vi bad om.• Så ville du ikke have anet noget om de nye

Volkswagen modeller med DK-pakker. • Du ville ikke have vidst, at en DK-pakke

er en vifte af originalt, fabriksmonteret ekstraudstyr. F.eks. til en Golf. Den omfatter Climatic aircondition, justerbar varme i forsæderne, opvarmelige skrinklerdyser og forlygte sprinklere.

• Havde du bare bladret videre, ville du have troet, at den slags luksus fordyrer en Golf med mange tusinde kroner. Det er jo ikke gratis at køre på 1. klasse. Især ikke her i landet. Så en merpris på 20.000 kr. må siges at være rimelig, ikke? Men nu er du nået så langt, at du godt kan få sandheden at vide. Vores tyske leverandør har pålagt os at sælge hele pakken for 5.000,-. Det er 15.000 kr. lige ned i foret. Eller lige ud af vinduet – alt efter hvilken side man ser det fra.

• TURN OVER TO ANOTHER PAGE!• There is something much more interesting on

the next page. • If only you had done what we asked you.• Then you would not have known anything about

the new Volkswagen models (?) with DK-packages.

• You would not have known that a DK-package is a a wide range of extra accessories

• ….

• If you had turned over the page, you would have thought that this type of luxury raise the price of a Golf with many thousands of kroner …


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A case study

BLADR VIDERE! (Turn over to another page!) Here it is predicated ‘that I, the reader, will turn over the page’, and the

illocutionary force is a request to me to make it happen. The direction of fit is from word to world.

It is implicated - as in all requests - that it is in the interest of the advertiser that I, the addressee, do so

(and in this case it is indicated to be in my interest too, since – as the next sentence says: There is something much more interesting on the next page)

But I doubt if the advertiser sincerely wants me to turn over the page and not read the text – since such an advertisement is very expensive

So I take it as a sort of rhetorical behaviour, by which the advertiser communicates a request, not to skip, but to read the advertisement.

And consequently I do so.


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A case study

Havde du bare gjort, som vi bad om (If only you had done what we asked for).

It is implicated (by bare) that ‘you would have been happier if you had done what we asked for’, viz. to turn over the page,

and it is (by past tense) presupposed ’that you have not done what we asked you to do’ - and certainly I have not, I didn’t skip the ad.

This presupposition is like a punch line. It suddenly becomes evident that I have been double crossed by the advertiser; BLADR VIDERE! should have been taken at face value. I should not have stayed at the page and red this foolish ad.

And it is - even through the written medium – a feeling of being deluded by someone with whom I engage in a talk exchange. The advertiser fooled med by a false implicature.


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A case study

Så ville du ikke have anet noget om de nye Volkswagen modeller (Then you would not have known anything about the new Volkswagen models)

This is in a way a revolution of the revolution (and we are back where we began), because it is here implicated that I would not have been happy if I had missed all that wonderful information about the cheap extra accessories to the Volkswagen.

But that is another story.

A A R H U S U N I V E R S I T Y 1 Scandinavian Institute Ole Togeby, Evidence in text interpretation...

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Transcript of A A R H U S U N I V E R S I T Y 1 Scandinavian Institute Ole Togeby, Evidence in text interpretation...