[SydPhil] Tomorrow: Nick Enfield: Scorekeeping in a Language Game @3.00

[Kristie Miller]

Dear all, 

Tomorrow’s current project seminar will be Nick Enfield presenting then following: 

 
In his 1979 paper ‘Scorekeeping in a Language Game’, David Lewis suggests that a presupposition can be introduced into a conversation simply by speaking as if that presupposition already held; thereby, it ‘springs into existence’. His example: ‘Even George could win’ introduces the presupposition that George is not an objectively strong candidate. Crucially, Lewis adds, ‘tacit acquiescence’ is also needed if this strategy is to work. The alternative to tacit acquiescence and accommodation of a presupposition is to block it with a form of explicit correction or challenge. His example: “Whadda ya mean ‘even George’?”. I would like to discuss two points that relate to my current research interest in everyday accountability. The first is that if conversation is a form of joint action, as Margaret Gilbert and many others have suggested, then such challenges are evidence of this: they show one participant exercising their ‘right to rebuke’ the other for a perceived transgression. The second point is that we can examine this question empirically, with reference to recordings of conversation collected in linguistic field work: I will present some cases of the ‘whaddya mean X?’ strategy for consideration in light of Lewis’s discussion.

As usual, seminars are in the muniment room at 3.00.


 
Associate Professor Kristie Miller
Senior ARC Research Fellow
Joint Director, the Centre for Time
School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry and
The Centre for Time
The University of Sydney
Sydney Australia
Room 407, A 14

kmiller at usyd.edu.au
kristie_miller at yahoo.com
Ph: +612 9036 9663
http://www.kristiemiller.net/KristieMiller2/Home_Page.html















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