Billy Clark, Middlesex University b.clarkmdx.ac.uk

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SALIENT INFERENCES PRAGMATICS,
STYLISTICS AND PRAGMATIC STYLISTICS

• Billy Clark, Middlesex University
  (b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk)

3rd Nitra Conference on Discourse
Studies Constantine The Philosopher
University, Nitra, March 2009
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AIMS

• To consider how stylistic analyses can exploit
  insights from approaches to pragmatics which
  focus on the inferential processes involved in
  communication.
• Despite practical difficulties in accounting for
  inferential processes (mainly to do with how much
  time and space they involve), accounts of
  inferential processes can help us to understand
  how texts create the effects they do and help us
  to understand literary interpretations and
  literary criticism.
• I also consider what we might achieve by looking
  at the inferential processes of (spoken and
  written) communicators as well as addressees, and
  I say a few words about how this might help in
  teaching reading and writing.

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
Conference on Discourse Studies, March 2009
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STRUCTURE

• Inference
• Pragmatics, Stylistics and Pragmatic Stylistics
• Stylistics Without Inference
• Stylistics With Inference
• Writers and Students
• Conclusion

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
Conference on Discourse Studies, March 2009
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Inference - Pragmatics and Stylistics -
Stylistics Without Inference - Stylistics With
Inference - Writers and Students

• We make inferences all the time without thinking
  about them, e.g. when I interpreted this text
  message at the airport in London on my way here
• I gave you a bunch me euros!

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
Conference on Discourse Studies, March 2009
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• I gave you a bunch me euros!
• I used a number of contextual assumptions,
  including
• that this was a response to a text from me
  commenting that one pound is no longer to enough
  to buy one euro
• that predictive text often predicts me when
  users intend of

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
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• I gave you a bunch me euros!
• And I made a number of inferences, including
• that my text had suggested (and so my wife
  thinks) that I had bought even more euros on the
  way
• that (my wife thinks) I might not have realised
  how many euros I already had
• that (my wife thinks) I might not be
  appreciating the helpfulness of giving me lots of
  euros
• that I here refers to my wife and that you
  refers to me

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
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• In everyday situations, we dont really notice
  the inferences were making. But some examples
  draw our attention to inferential processes so
  that we cant help notice them (even if we dont
  use terminology from pragmatics in discussing
  them). Examples include
• jokes
• misunderstanding
• contested meanings
• certain kinds of witty or playful language,
  including literary or creative language

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
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• Gordon Brown during Prime Ministers Questions in
  the House of Commons last week (18 March 2009)
• I think the Leader of the Opposition doesnt
  understand one thing. This is an unprecedented
  global banking crisis. Unprecedented means
  without precedent. Global means its in the
  whole of the world. Banking Crisis means its
  affecting every bank in the world

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
Conference on Discourse Studies, March 2009
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• A man is driving a truck down the motorway when
  he sees some wild monkeys playing by the side of
  the road. He gathers them into his truck and
  drives on. A police officer spots him and forces
  him to stop. The driver explains what has
  happened and asks the policeman what to do. I
  think youd better take them to the zoo,
  suggests the police officer. The man agrees. The
  next day, the same police officer sees the same
  driver in the same truck still carrying the same
  group of monkeys. He stops the truck again. What
  are you doing with the monkeys? asks the police
  officer. I thought you were taking them to the
  zoo. Yes, replies the driver. I took them
  there yesterday. They loved it. Today Im taking
  them to the seaside.

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
Conference on Discourse Studies, March 2009
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• (Bob Dylan after reading in a newspaper that he
  smokes 80 cigarettes a day)
• Im glad Im not me.
• (Bob Dylan after reading in a newspaper that he
  smokes 80 cigarettes a day - Dont Look Back,
  1965. dir. D.A. Pennebaker)

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
Conference on Discourse Studies, March 2009
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• (Bob Dylan after being asked what kind of rain he
  had in mind when writing his song A Hard Rains
  Gonna Fall. The questioner suggested acid rain
  or some kind of post-nuclear rain)
• Well, I always thought it was a hard rain.
• (discussed in Cook, G. 2007. This we have done
  The different vaguenesses of poetry and public
  relations. In Cutting, J. (ed.) Vague Language
  Explored. Palgrave, London 21-39)

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
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• (John Lennon discussing the controversy following
  his comment about The Beatles being bigger than
  Jesus)
• I didnt mean what everybody thinks I meant.
• (Included in the film The US versus John Lennon,
  2007, dir. David Leaf and John Scheinfeld)

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
Conference on Discourse Studies, March 2009
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• Another case where we might argue that
  inferential processes become more salient is in
  responding to literary or other creative texts .
  . .

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
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• Pragmatics, Stylistics and Pragmatic
  Stylistics are all understood in different ways
  by different researchers. My aim today is to
  consider how one approach to pragmatics (focusing
  on inference) can be applied to one approach to
  stylistics (aiming to explain how texts give rise
  to the effects they do).

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
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• Most broadly, pragmatics is about language use
  and users.
• Sometimes, this leads to a focus mainly on
  social phenomena and sometimes mainly on
  psychological phenomena. (Although it is hard to
  see how you could account for one without an
  account of the other).
• The main focus could be on the communicator, on
  the audience, on (social, institutional or other)
  context(s), or on the interaction of more than
  one of these.

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
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• Work which has developed from the work of Paul
  Grice has focused largely on inferences made in
  understanding utterances.
• But there are a large number of different
  approaches and a large number of different kinds
  of work which could be termed pragmatics.
• Today, Ill be thinking mainly about approaches
  which build on Grices approach which aimed to
  explain how we can mean more than we say when
  we communicate. Key assumptions here are that
  understanding utterances involves the inference
  of meanings which go beyond the literal, or
  linguistically encoded, meanings of utterances.
  There has been extensive discussion about the
  details of this (see, for example, discussion by
  Burton-Roberts 2007, Carston 2002, Levinson 2000,
  Recanati 2004)

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
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• A typical example exchange might be
• Student What do you think of my draft essay?
• Tutor How long did you work on it?

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
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• Student What do you think of my draft essay?
• Tutor How long did you work on it?
• Gricean and post-Gricean accounts would focus on
  how the student in this context uses evidence
  provided by the tutors utterance to arrive at an
  interpretation of the tutors utterance. For many
  approaches, the key thing here is that the
  indirectness of the answer suggests a less than
  positive assessment of the draft essay.

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
Conference on Discourse Studies, March 2009
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• There are a large number of approaches to
  stylistics, but many of them would fit quite well
  with this characterisation
• Stylistics stylistics characteristically
  deals with the interpretation of texts by
  focusing in detail on relevant distinctive
  linguistic features, patterns, structures or
  levels and on their significance and effects on
  readers
• Wales, K. 2006. Stylistics. In Brown, K. (ed.)
  Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd
  edition. Elsevier, Oxford 213-217 (this quote
  from p.216).

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
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• Peter Stockwell says something a bit more
  specific
• There is a growing body of work in stylistics
  which marries up detailed analysis at the
  micro-linguistic level with a broader view of the
  communicative context . . . The numerous
  different developments that I outline below all
  have in common the basic stylistic tenets of
  being rigorous, systematic, transparent and open
  to falsifiability . . . In short, they present
  themselves as aspects of a social science of
  literature
• (Stockwell 2006 755)

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
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• . . . Stylistics necessarily involves the
  simultaneous practice of linguistic analysis and
  awareness of the interpretative and social
  dimension
• (Stockwell, 2006 755)

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
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• Cognitive Stylistics might also be relevant
  here
• . . . in focusing on the relationship between
  linguistic choices and effects, stylistics has
  always been concerned with both texts and
  readers interpretations of texts . . . What is
  new about cognitive stylistics is the way in
  which linguistic analysis is systematically based
  on theories that relate linguistic choices to
  cognitive structures and processes. This provides
  more systematic and explicit accounts of the
  relationship between texts on the one hand and
  responses and interpretations on the other
• Semino, E. and J. Culpeper. 2002. Foreword in
  Semino and Culpeper (eds.) 2002. Cognitive
  Stylistics Language and cognition in text
  analysis. John Benjamins, Amsterdam xi

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
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• Cognitive stylistics is . . . crucially
  concerned with reading . . . at its core,
  cognitive stylistics sets out to answer two main
  questions first, what do people do when they
  read? And second, what happens to readers when
  they read?
• Burke, M. 2006. Stylistics, Cognitive. In
  Brown, K. (ed.) Encyclopedia of Language and
  Linguistics, 2nd edition. Elsevier, Oxford 218.

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
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• Pragmatic Stylistics also has different
  meanings for different people. Elizabeth Black
  (2006. Pragmatic Stylistics. Edinburgh University
  Press, Edinburgh) takes an eclectic approach,
  applying ideas from a range of approaches as
  tools to help us understand how texts work.

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
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• Work in pragmatic stylistics has largely focused
  on psychological processes involved in
  understanding, or developing interpretations of,
  texts.
• A natural assumption is that Gricean or
  post-Gricean approaches can explain how
  characters understand each other and how we
  understand characters,

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
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• But of course there are layered communicative
  acts in any literary text
• . . . There is a further distinction to be made
  between work that applies the pragmatic models to
  examples of communicative interaction between
  fictional participants in literary texts, and
  work that addresses the nature of the interaction
  between writer and reader.
• MacMahon, B. 2006. Stylistics Pragmatic
  Approaches. In Brown, K. (ed.) Encyclopedia of
  Language and Linguistics, 2nd edition. Elsevier,
  Oxford 232-236 (this quote from p.232).
• Pragmatic Stylistics should have something to say
  about all kids of inferences involved in
  interpreting texts.

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
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• One way to look at how much accounts of inference
  can help with stylistic analyses is to begin by
  looking at two examples of successful stylistic
  analyses which do not go far in attempting to
  explain inferences.
• One good example is Michael Hallidays famous
  (1971) analysis of William Goldings novel The
  Inheritors. Another is David Hoovers (1999)
  analysis of the same novel. Hoover explicitly
  suggests that an account of inferential processes
  would help us understand the text.

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
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• Stylistics Without Inference The Inheritors
  can be seen as containing four parts
• Epigraph
• Passage A (pp.11-215)
• Passage B (pp.216-222)
• Passage C (pp.223-233)

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
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• Halliday and Hoover do not divide the text up in
  the same way.
• Halliday contrasts language A which covers the
  first (and largest) part of the book and
  language C which covers the final section. He
  claims there is no language B but that the
  intervening passage has features of both.
• Hoover sees the book as divided into three parts
  based on the narrative voice/point of view/mind
  style.

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
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• Here is an extract from Passage A (the very
  beginning, page 11)
• Lok was running as fast as he could. His head was
  down and he carried his thorn bush horizontally
  for balance and smacked the drifts of vivid buds
  aside with his free hand. Liku rode him laughing,
  one hand clutched in the chestnut curls that lay
  on his neck and down his spine, the other holding
  the little Oa tucked under his chin. Loks feet
  were clever. They saw. They threw him round the
  displayed roots of the beeches, leapt when a
  puddle of water lay across the trail. Liku beat
  his belly with her feet.
• Faster! Faster!
• His feet stabbed, he swerved and slowed. Now they
  could hear the river that lay parallel but hidden
  to their left. The beeches opened, the bush went
  away and they were in the little patch of flat
  mud where the log was.

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
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• Moments later, when Lok and Liku arrive at the
  place where the log was, Lok says (page 12)
• The log has gone away.

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
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• Here is an extract from passage B (pages
  216-217)
• The red creature stood on the edge of the terrace
  and did nothing. The hollow log was a dark spot
  on the water towards the place where the sun had
  gone down. The air in the gap was clear and blue
  and calm. There was no noise at all now except
  for the fall, for there was no wind and the green
  sky was clear. The red creature turned to the
  right and trotted slowly towards the far end of
  the terrace.

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
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• And here is an extract from passage C (page 223)
• Tuami sat in the stern of the dug-out, the
  steering paddle under his left arm. There was
  plenty of light and the patches of salt no longer
  looked like holes in the skin sail. He thought
  bitterly of the great square sail they had left
  bundled up in that last mad hour among the
  mountains for with that and the breeze through
  the gap he need not have endured these hours of
  strain. He need not have sat all night wondering
  whether the current would beat the wind and bear
  them back to the fall while the people or as many
  as were left of them slept their collapsed sleep.

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
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• Hallidays analysis is based on distinguishing
  Language A and Language C and establishing
  contrasts between them

Language A Restricted diction (e.g. stick, twig,
log for bow, arrow, boat) Inanimate objects/human
body parts as subjects of transitive verbs High
number of intransitive verbs
Language B Richer diction (e.g. bow, arrow,
dug-out, sterering-paddle, sail, etc.) Human
subjects for transitive verbs More transitive
verbs
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• Halliday on Language A (1971 349-353)
• The picture is one in which which people act,
  but they do not act on things they move, but
  they move only themselves, not other objects It
  is particularly the lack of transitive clauses of
  action with human subjects . . . that creates an
  atmosphere of ineffectual activity the scene is
  one of constant movement, but movement which is
  as much inanimate as human and in which only the
  mover is affected nothing else changes. . . .
  it is the syntax as such, rather than the
  syntactic reflection of the subject-matter, to
  which we are responding . . . . the entire
  transitivity structure of Language A can be
  summed up by saying that there is no cause and
  effect.

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
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• Largely based on corpus evidence, Hoover comes to
  different conclusions, including
• There is no monolithic Language A, at least not
  with respect to transitivity (p.26)
• . . . the extremely high levels of transitivity
  in some sections of language A are more unusual
  than the low levels in some sections of language
  A and language C (p.46)

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• For Hoover, the main characteristics of The
  Inheritors (mainly of language A) are
• short, simple sentences, mainly in simple past
  tense
• body parts and inanimate objects as agents, and
  as subjects of mental process and perception
  verbs, and intransitive verbs of motion
• body parts and inanimate objects with attributes
  normally associated with animate beings
• a small, concentrated, peculiarly distributed
  vocabulary of short words
• a high proportion of very frequent concrete,
  physical nouns and verbs
• natural object words used to refer to artifacts,
  buildings, and boats
• words referring to modern cultural phenomena and
  activities and names of known places and people
  are absent

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• Despite differences in the details, it seems to
  me that these two analyses do tell us quite a lot
  about how The Inheritors works. What might be
  added by looking at inference?
• A number of possibilities arise, some of them
  suggested (but not fully developed) by Hoover.
• First, we can look at specific local inferences
  we make when reading texts. As mentioned above,
  some of these are to do with how characters
  understand each other or events, some are to do
  with how we understand characters and events,
  some are to do with how we understand what the
  author or narrator (or an implied
  author/narrator) intends us to communicate, and
  so on.

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• Specific inferences
• Fa looked across to the place where the broken
  trail began again. There was earth churned up
  there where the other end of the log had lain.
  She asked a question of Ha and he answered her
  with his mouth.
• (The Inheritors, page 13)

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• The bushes twitched again. Lok steadied by the
  tree and gazed. A head and a chest faced him,
  half-hidden. There were white bone things behind
  the leaves and hair. The man had white bone
  things above his eyes and under the mouth so that
  his face was longer than a face should be. The
  man turned sideways in the bushes and looked at
  Lok along his shoulder. A stick rose upright and
  there was a lump of bone in the middle. Lok
  peered at the stick and the lump of bone and the
  small eyes in the bone things over the face.
  Suddenly Lok understood that the man was holding
  the stick out to him but neither he nor Lok could
  reach across the river. He would have laughed if
  it were not for the echo of the screaming in his
  head. The stick began to grow shorter at both
  ends. Then it shot out to full length again.
• The dead tree by Loks ear acquired a voice.
• Clop!
• His ears twitched and he turned to the tree. By
  his face there had grown a twig a twig that
  smelt of other, and of goose, and of the bitter
  berries that Loks stomach told him he must not
  eat.
• (The Inheritors, page 106)

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
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• Inferences before reading
• Assumptions we have before we begin reading might
  be based on assumptions about the author, about
  the book or its genre, about its physical or
  other location, and so on. Hoover mentions how
  different covers might affect interpretations.
  The epigraph is also worth looking at here.

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• Epigraph
• . . . We know very little of the appearance of
  the Neanderthal man, but this . . . seems to
  suggest an extreme hairiness, an ugliness, or a
  repulsive strangeness in his appearance over and
  above his low forehead, his beetle brows, his ape
  neck, and his inferior stature. . . . Says Sir
  Harry Johnston, in a survey of the rise of modern
  man in his Views and Reviews The dim racial
  remembrance of such gorilla-like monsters, with
  cunning brains, shambling gait, hairy bodies,
  strong teeth, and possibly cannibalistic
  tendencies, may be the germ of the ogre in
  folklore . . .
• H.G. Wells, Outline of History

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• Effects of the different languages
• Neither Halliday nor Lok say much about
  inferences we might make based on the differences
  among the different languages. As mentioned
  above, Halliday suggests that it is the syntax
  as such, rather than the syntactic reflection of
  the subject-matter, to which we are responding.
  Hoover rejects Hallidays claim that the
  transitivity levels are independent of subject
  matter and cites passages in passage A which are
  straightforwardly transitive and suggests that
  some of the sense of powerlessness and
  ineffectiveness associated with language A are
  inherent in the plot. It seems, at least, that
  there is more work to be done on establishing
  where particular effects of the novel come
  from. Could an account of inference provide part
  of the story?

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
Conference on Discourse Studies, March 2009
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Inference - Pragmatics and Stylistics -
Stylistics Without Inference - Stylistics With
Inference - Writers and Students

• Hoovers comment about the more complex variation
  in transitivity levels might suggest an
  inferential account of some of these contrasts.
• There is also a very striking difference in the
  experience of reading the different passages
  which neither Halliday nor Hoover comment on the
  inferential processing involved in reading
  passage A is much more complex and difficult than
  reading passage B or passage C.

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
Conference on Discourse Studies, March 2009
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Inference - Pragmatics and Stylistics -
Stylistics Without Inference - Stylistics With
Inference - Writers and Students

• The bushes twitched again. Lok steadied by the
  tree and gazed. A head and a chest faced him,
  half-hidden. There were white bone things behind
  the leaves and hair. The man had white bone
  things above his eyes and under the mouth so that
  his face was longer than a face should be. The
  man turned sideways in the bushes and looked at
  Lok along his shoulder. A stick rose upright and
  there was a lump of bone in the middle. Lok
  peered at the stick and the lump of bone and the
  small eyes in the bone things over the face.
  Suddenly Lok understood that the man was holding
  the stick out to him but neither he nor Lok could
  reach across the river. He would have laughed if
  it were not for the echo of the screaming in his
  head. The stick began to grow shorter at both
  ends. Then it shot out to full length again.
• (page 106)

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
Conference on Discourse Studies, March 2009
46
Inference - Pragmatics and Stylistics -
Stylistics Without Inference - Stylistics With
Inference - Writers and Students

• Passage B gives us a new, detached, perspective
  on Lok
• The red creature stood on the edge of the terrace
  and did nothing. The hollow log was a dark spot
  on the water towards the place where the sun had
  gone down. The air in the gap was clear and blue
  and calm. There was no noise at all now except
  for the fall, for there was no wind and the green
  sky was clear. The red creature turned to the
  right and trotted slowly towards the far end of
  the terrace.
• (pages 216-217)

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
Conference on Discourse Studies, March 2009
47
Inference - Pragmatics and Stylistics -
Stylistics Without Inference - Stylistics With
Inference - Writers and Students

• Passage C gives us a new, engaged, perspective on
  the new people.
• Tuami sat in the stern of the dug-out, the
  steering paddle under his left arm. There was
  plenty of light and the patches of salt no longer
  looked like holes in the skin sail. He thought
  bitterly of the great square sail they had left
  bundled up in that last mad hour among the
  mountains for with that and the breeze through
  the gap he need not have endured these hours of
  strain. He need not have sat all night wondering
  whether the current would beat the wind and bear
  them back to the fall while the people or as many
  as were left of them slept their collapsed sleep.
• (page 223)

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
Conference on Discourse Studies, March 2009
48
Inference - Pragmatics and Stylistics -
Stylistics Without Inference - Stylistics With
Inference - Writers and Students

• Reading passage A is a much more laborious
  process than reading passage B or passage C. All
  readers comment on how difficult this passage is.
  Inferential conclusions require significant work
  and readers can not be sure theyve got the
  right conclusions at the end of the process.
  The passage raises a number of questions and does
  not resolve them, sometimes until later in the
  novel, sometimes not comletely conclusively.
• Passage B is clearer. We realise that we are
  looking at Lok from a detached point of view but
  one which sees the world from a point of view
  similar too our own.
• Passage C is shaped by a consciousness like our
  own.

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
Conference on Discourse Studies, March 2009
49
Inference - Pragmatics and Stylistics -
Stylistics Without Inference - Stylistics With
Inference - Writers and Students

• Reading passage C is much easier than reading
  passage A and easier than reading passage C.
  Objects are described in ways which make sense to
  us. Descriptions of events, reasoning and
  emotions make instant sense to us.
• Inferences come thick and fast. Noticing this
  contrast is one of the key effects of reading the
  text. One thing it strongly implicates is that
  the new people are people like us and so that
  there is a sense in which we are the inheritors
  who have had a catastrophic impact on Loks
  world.
• The effects of salient inferences such as this
  are a strong argument for looking at the
  inferential processes involved in reading texts
  and at ways in which writers aim to manipulate
  inferences in general.

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
Conference on Discourse Studies, March 2009
50
Inference - Pragmatics and Stylistics -
Stylistics Without Inference - Stylistics With
Inference - Writers and Students

• Other areas to explore include
• Global inferences based on evidence provided by
  a text as a whole rather than specific passages
  (e.g. assumptions about Loks people being able
  to communicate without words).
• Inferences which take place after, but not
  necessarily immediately after, reading a text
  (e.g. inferences which make a text grow on you
  or determine which works continue to be popular
  or valued).
• Inferences involved in developing literary
  interpretations.
• Inferences involved in literary criticism and in
  critical discussion.

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
Conference on Discourse Studies, March 2009
51
Inference - Pragmatics and Stylistics -
Stylistics Without Inference - Stylistics With
Inference - Writers and Students

• In ongoing research, I am working with Nicky
  Owtram (European University Institute, Florence)
  to explore the inferential processes involved in
  writing and how understanding this might help
  writers, including students, to develop their
  abilities.
• This is at a very early stage but classroom
  activities based on this have been very popular
  with students so far.

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
Conference on Discourse Studies, March 2009
52
CONCLUSIONS

• All communication involves inference by
  communicators and addressees. Understanding these
  inferential processes is in general a useful way
  of helping to understand how texts give rise to
  effects.
• In some cases, the inferences we make are very
  salient so it is particularly important to look
  at inference in these cases.
• Understanding inference can help us to understand
  further aspects of texts, including how they
  affect us after reading, literary interpretations
  and literary criticism.
• The inferences made by writers are another area
  worth investigating.

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
Conference on Discourse Studies, March 2009
53
THE END - THANK YOU!

• This powerpoint and other materials (are or will
  be) available at
• http//pragmaticstylistics.org
• Or email me at
• b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk

Billy Clark, b.clark_at_mdx.ac.uk 3rd Nitra
Conference on Discourse Studies, March 2009