Pragmatics and Non-Verbal Communication

Abstract

The way we say the words we say helps us convey our intended meanings. Indeed, the tone of voice we use, the facial expressions and bodily gestures we adopt while we are talking, often add entirely new layers of meaning to those words. How the natural non-verbal properties of utterances interact with linguistic ones is a question that is often largely ignored. This book redresses the balance, providing a unique examination of non-verbal behaviours from a pragmatic perspective. It charts a point of contact between pragmatics, linguistics, philosophy, cognitive science, ethology and psychology, and provides the analytical basis to answer some important questions: How are non-verbal behaviours interpreted? What do they convey? How can they be best accommodated within a theory of utterance interpretation?

Predicting online lecture ratings based on gesturing and vocal behavior

“…Nonverbal aspects of speech influence, to a significant extent, the impression that listeners develop about speakers [44]. Therefore, the approach focuses on prosody (the way one talks) and voice quality (the spectral properties of one's voice).…”

This and that: A procedural analysis

“…but, so, also) are best seen as encoding, not information which contributes directly to conceptual representations, but information about the type of inferential computations the hearer is expected to go through in constructing an overall interpretation (Blakemore, 1987). This work laid the foundations for an important theoretical distinction between conceptual and procedural encoding, which has played a major role in relevance-theoretic accounts of both verbal and non-verbal communication (Blakemore, 1987(Blakemore, , 2002Wharton, 2009;Wilson and Sperber, 1993). On this approach, conceptual encoding yields conceptual representations that figure directly in the explicatures that provide the input to further inferential computation, while procedural encoding places constraints on the types of representations to be constructed or the computations that are to take place (Blakemore, 1987(Blakemore, , 2002(Blakemore, , 2007Hall, 2007;Wharton, 2003Wharton, , 2009Wilson, 2011).…”

“…This work laid the foundations for an important theoretical distinction between conceptual and procedural encoding, which has played a major role in relevance-theoretic accounts of both verbal and non-verbal communication (Blakemore, 1987(Blakemore, , 2002Wharton, 2009;Wilson and Sperber, 1993). On this approach, conceptual encoding yields conceptual representations that figure directly in the explicatures that provide the input to further inferential computation, while procedural encoding places constraints on the types of representations to be constructed or the computations that are to take place (Blakemore, 1987(Blakemore, , 2002(Blakemore, , 2007Hall, 2007;Wharton, 2003Wharton, , 2009Wilson, 2011). As Blakemore puts it, expressions that encode procedures 'do not encode a constituent of a conceptual representation (or even indicate a concept), but guide the comprehension process so that the hearer ends up with a conceptual representation ' (2002:91).…”

That bloody so-and-so has retired: Expressives revisited

“…In principle, these could be of any type at all, although in practice they are likely to be drawn from modules which play a significant role in linguistic communication: these include the modules (or submodules) involved in mindreading (Baron-Cohen, 1995), emotion reading (Wharton, 2003(Wharton, , 2009, social cognition (Malle, 2004;Fiske and Taylor, 2008), parsing and speech production (Levelt,1993), comprehension ) and so on. Wilson (2011: 17) But what precisely are these emotion-reading procedures?…”