可取消性检验对显义的适用性——一项基于语义直觉判断的实证研究

On the Applicability of Cancellability Test to Explicature:An Empirical Study Based on the Subjects' Judgment Through Semantic Intuition

可取消性检验是格赖斯用以甄别"所言"与"所含"的重要手段。关联论者对格赖斯的意义理论做出了修正,提出以显义概念取代"所言"。显义作为对所言进行语用充实的产物是否具有可取消性,目前学界莫衷一是、尚无定论。然而,迄今对该论题的探讨大多倚重理论思辨,鲜见运用实验语言哲学方法开展的实证研究。本文采用问卷调查法收集并分析了89名英语专业研究生关于显义可否取消之直觉判断的数据。研究结果表明,语境信息和显义特性均对受试的判断产生影响。语境信息越丰富,受试越易识别话语的显义,显义也更难取消;在给定的语境中,受试对不同类型显义的识解以及对其可取消性的评判也存在差异,显义愈外显,愈加难以取消。

Cancellability Test （CT） was an important means for Grice to distinguish between what-issaid and what-is-implicated. Grice＇s account of meaning was revised by the Relevance theorists who proposed to replace what-is-said with the notion of＂explicature＂. Whether explicature, construed as the output of pragmatically enriching what-is-said, can be somehow cancelled is being heatedly debated in the academic circle. Most of the discussions on the topic so far, however, have relied upon armchair theorizing and philosophical speculating, with few empirical investigations carried out in the way advocated by experimental philosophy of language. Adopting a questionnaire approach, the present study collected and analyzed the data of intuitive judgments on explicature cancellability from 89 MA and Ph D students of English major. As the findings show, the subjects＇judgments have been affected by both contextual information and the specific features of explicature, i.e., the richer the contextual information, the easier for the subjects to identify explicature which in turn gets more difficult to cancel; in a given context, moreover, there exist noticeable differences among the subjects in their recognition of various kinds of explicature as well as in their judgments on its cancellability, to the effect that the more explicit the explicature, the harder to cancel it.