Defeasibility In Pragmatics

Linguistics has shown a constant evolution in the way studies, language, and the art of expression is observed throughout centuries. Within this branch of linguistic studies introduces an important sub-part known as Pragmatics. Pragmatics shows the study of meaning of how words string together to create meanings which may be different depending upon context. Pragmatics borrows different types of disciplines such as philosophy, sociology other parts of linguistics and anthropology to approach the behaviour of languages. Pragmatics contains theories which are still being explored and studied, such as speech act theory, politeness and impoliteness theory, conversational implicature and so on. The area of interest that will be explored and expressed …show more content…
Defeasibility is introduced by the occurrences of a presupposition being denied. The ways they can be eliminated are through background assumptions, conversational implicatures, and certain discourse contexts Huang (2014). The usefulness of defeasibility in presuppositions is the removal of the inconsistencies of factual information (background assumptions) which will not trigger the presupposition, therefore the statement cannot lead to a contradiction. Specifically, context matters a lot, which defeasibility helps with by removing such inconsistencies. The reasoning why context matters is because given that you have background knowledge to begin with then the opposing presupposition will not trigger, leading to a more efficient way of communication and less ambiguity. Some weaknesses of defeasibility is depending on the context, extracting the presupposition from some sentences may be extremely ambiguous. Given some contexts of real-world knowledge or how some conversational implicatures get involved within a sentence, it is quite common that presuppositions are defeated and should be. Beaver (2001) states that some authors such as Kempson and Wilson highly prefer defeasibility or