Susceptibility to Pragmatic Implications: A Thesis

“The meaning of a sentence is derived from the original words by an active, interpretive process. The original sentence that is perceived is rapidly forgotten and memory is for the meaning suggested by the sentence” J. Sachs, 1967. 

Background: Cognitive psychologists have adopted linguistic principles, introduced by Noam Chomsky, as a method for measuring verbal comprehension and memory. Chomsky’s model recognizes that language is expressed on two different levels - a ‘surface structure’, representing the audible/visible properties of a sentence (i.e. morphemes and syntax) - and a ‘deep structure’, representing the underlying semantic relationships conveyed by a sentence (Chomsky 1965). What they found is that people retain mostly the deep structure of a sentence while the surface-structure is purged within milliseconds and no longer available for recall (Barclay 1973; Bransford and Franks 1971). The resulting memory is not a literal transcript of speech. It is more like a coded network of meaning and concepts suggested by the original sentence, as well as the past experience of the listener. What we come away with is a feeling of familiarity, based on our own beliefs and experience as well information supplied by the speaker.

Susceptibility to Pragmatic Implications: Research in cognitive psychology has lead to the discovery of a fundamental property of verbal communication – it is a probabilistic event. The communication channel of language is relatively narrow and only allows for the thoughts and feelings suggested by the speaker. This presents the listener with a range of possibilities. At best, communication takes place when the listener infers the most likely meaning intended by the speaker. (Read more)