A pragmatic representational approach of context and reference in discourses

Abstract

Apart from general rules or laws, knowledge must be considered with respect to the agents that manipulate or communicate it. We introduced the notion of discourse space which refers to constructs which are created, updated or evoked by an agent who tries to generate or understand a discourse. Our approach which is based on a generalization of Sowa’s conceptual graph theory is used to explain a variety of referential mechanisms such as indexicality, metonymy, referential opacity and transparency.