Discourse spaces: A pragmatic interpretation of contexts

Abstract

In human interactions the context in which verbal and non-verbal acts are performed has a prime importance. In this paper we propose an approach emphasizing the cognitive dimension of contexts. Our basic assumption is that a human agent naturally uses contextual information because she cannot manipulate or communicate knowledge without positioning herself relatively to that knowledge. We introduce the notion of discourse space (DS) a pragmatic form of context which is used to structure knowledge contained in a discourse. Discourse spaces are created, updated or evoked by an agent who tries to generate or understand a discourse. We extend the basic conceptual graph framework with notions like temporal objects, temporal localizations and different kinds of discourse spaces: situations, definitional and focal DSs. Then, we present agent-related DSs (narrator’s and agent’s perspectives, agent’s attitudes) and inference-related discourse spaces (conditional, alternative, generalized, hypothetical and counterfactual DSs). We also show how these DSs are interleaved in the representation of a discourse.