A relational account of communication on the basis of slips of the tongue

JOSÉ MARÍA GIL

Intercultural Pragmatics

Mouton De Gruyter

Lugar: Berlín; Año: 2019 vol. 16 p. 153 - 183

1612-295X

The socio-cognitive approach to pragmatics [SCA] is based on two fundamental hypotheses: (1) speaker and hearer are equal participants in the communicative process, (2) communication is the result of the interplay of intention and attention, as this interplay is motivated by the individuals´ private socio-cultural backgrounds. In this paper, I aim at showing that relational network theory (which has been mainly developed by the American neurolinguist Sydney M. Lamb) allow us to account not only for aspects corresponding to intention or attention, but also for "smooth communication" and "bumpy communication" (being the latter the dimension which includes unintended meanings). Four actual slips of the tongue will be relevant examples thanks to which it can be recognized how cooperation and intention are in a highly complex interaction together with the substantial elements of the individual traits: attention, private experience, egocentrism, and salience. Within this context, the relational account is epistemologically crucial. Firstly, it allows us to represent the neurocognitive structures that enable a person to produce or understand utterances. Secondly, it helps us to suggest that canonical pragmatics (like Speech Acts Theory, Gricean Pragmatics, Relevance Theory) cannot even consider actual and relevant phenomena like slips of the tongue, because they focus on cooperative intention and they neglect (or discard) egocentric attention.