Experimental Pragmatics: a Gricean turn in the study of language

Discerning the meaning of an utterance requires not only mastering grammar and knowing the meanings of words but also understanding the communicative (i.e. pragmatic) features of language. Although it has been an ever present aspect of linguistic analyses and discussions, it is only over the last ten years or so that cognitive scientists have been investigating – in a concerted fashion – the pragmatic features of language experimentally. We begin by highlighting Paul Grice’s contributions to ordinary language philosophy and show how it has led to this active area of experimental investigation. We then focus on two exemplary phenomena – ‘scalar inference’ and ‘reference resolution’ – before considering other topics that fit into the paradigm known as ‘experimental pragmatics’.