Department of Psychology, University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA.
Top Cogn Sci. 2012 Jan;4(1):7-20. doi: 10.1111/j.1756-8765.2011.01172.x.
How do people decide what to say in context? Many theories of pragmatics assume that people have specialized knowledge that drives them to utter certain words in different situations. But these theories are mostly unable to explain both the regularity and variability in people's speech behaviors. Our purpose in this article is to advance a view of pragmatics based on complexity theory, which specifically explains the pragmatic choices speakers make in conversations. The concept of self-organized criticality sheds light on how a history of utterances and subtle details of a situation surrounding a conversation may directly specify language behavior. Under this view, pragmatic choice in discourse does not reflect the output of any dedicated pragmatic module but arises from a complex coordination or coupling between speakers and their varying communicative tasks.
人们如何决定在语境中说什么？许多语用学理论假设人们具有专门的知识，这些知识驱使他们在不同的情况下说出某些特定的词语。但这些理论大多无法解释人们言语行为的规律性和可变性。本文的目的是基于复杂性理论提出一种语用学观点，该观点具体解释了说话者在对话中做出的语用选择。自组织临界性的概念阐明了言语的历史和对话周围情境的细微细节如何直接指定语言行为。根据这种观点，语篇中的语用选择并不反映任何专门的语用模块的输出，而是源于说话者和他们不断变化的交际任务之间的复杂协调或耦合。
