Linguistics meets economics: Dealing with semantic variation
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3765/plsa.v5i2.4794Keywords:
variation, semantics, communicative act, Grice, transaction, economicsAbstract
We explore here what happens in conversation when listeners encounter variation as well as change in semantics. Working within a general Gricean framework, and in ways somewhat akin to the “Cheap Talk” model of Crawford and Sobel (1982) and the “Rational Speech Act” model of Goodman and Frank (2016), we develop here a transactional view of communicative acts, based largely on insights drawn from economics. Taking a novel perspective, we build on what happens when communication misfires rather than examining what makes for successful communication. We see this effort as a demonstration of the utility of taking an economic perspective on linguistic issues, specifically the analysis of communicative acts.Downloads
Published
2020-06-09
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Articles
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Published by the LSA with permission of the author(s) under a CC BY 4.0 license.
How to Cite
Clark-Joseph, Adam D., and Brian D. Joseph. 2020. “Linguistics Meets Economics: Dealing With Semantic Variation”. Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America 5 (2): 67–74. https://doi.org/10.3765/plsa.v5i2.4794.