What can pragmatics learn from the law? (On Recanati’s cases of modulation, indirect reporting, and cancellability of explicatures)

Abstract

This chapter is a contribution to societal pragmatics, as intended (and defended) by Jacob L. Mey (Pragmatics. An introduction. Oxford, Blackwell, 2001). The approach to this chapter is mainly Wittgensteinian as I am interested in conditions of use and how these can have effects on pragmatic inferences. By investigating the law and pragmatics, I end up with a radical Wittgensteinian conception of what the language game of modulation is. When the term of art ‘modulation’ was introduced by Recanati (Literal meaning. Cambridge, CUP, 2004), it was merely thought of as a pragmatic inference and not as a language game. I will explain, after the application of pragmatics and the law to the concept of modulation, how it can come about that modulation can be considered a language game. In this chapter, I also reconsider indirect reporting as a societal practice, and I expatiate on reporting rules or rule-based decisions. I finish the chapter by briefly reconsidering cancellability of explicatures.