Journal of Pragmatics | 2019
Pragmatics and the challenge of ‘non-propositional’ effects
Abstract
Abstract Although some utterances communicate a determinate speaker s meaning which can be duplicated in the minds of speaker and hearer, others communicate – either alongside or instead of a speaker s meaning – something much less determinate, often described as a ‘non-propositional effect’. Creative metaphors, for instance, are seen as conveying loose impressions, perhaps interspersed with images, which vary from one addressee to another, and typically activate perceptual, emotional or sensorimotor mechanisms. After illustrating the notion of a non-propositional effect and outlining some of the challenges these interpretive effects present for current linguistic approaches to pragmatics, we consider how they might be dealt with in more cognitively oriented approaches such as relevance theory, and what role mental imagery might play in metaphor interpretation in particular.