Hermeneutic pragmatics and the pitfalls of the normative imagination

This article is concerned with a full incorporation of agency into linguistic pragmatics and to this end it provides a hermeneutic model in which the formal and functional aspects of language are articulated with an elaborated notion of autopoiesis. In presenting this model certain critical comments are made concerning formalism in pragmatics, to the effect that excessively formalised approaches, in which agency is practically absent, cannot deal with the full range of meaning that is created by the very nature of inter-agentive relations in communication. Following on from this demonstration, the article proposes a way of avoiding the impasses of formalism and functionalism in received theory via a ‘hermeneutic pragmatics’ that begins from a ‘grammatical hermeneutics’. The article shows how actantial relations in natural representational language, as used in common narratives, already provide a rich typology of inter-agentive relations. These are analysed in terms of three categories of agentive action that have been introduced: projection, introjection, and practical evaluation. The article concludes by posing an empirical question for investigation concerning the relationship between communicative practices and narratives about communication.