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LINGUISTIC INDETERMINACY AND SOCIAL CONTEXT IN UTTERANCE INTERPRETATION John DoreR. P. McDermott Baruch College,Teachers College, City University of New YorkColumbia University Two approaches to the problem of interpreting utterances are sketched: a structural account at the levels of sentence and speech act, and an interactional account of their functions and consequences as constitutive of the social order in which they occur. For the problem of utterance interpretation, linguistic analyses can specify potential meanings and functions, but cannot indicate actual interpretations to which conversationalists are oriented. Linguistic analysis alone renders an account that is propositionally ambiguous, functionally equivocal, and interactionally indeterminate. In order to account for how talk becomes determinate for conversationalists, a pragmatically-based interactional approach is offered. A segment of actual conversation that occurred during a first-grade lesson is analysed here, with focus on a description of the contexts in terms of which talk is understood. One utterance in particular, characterized as a pragmatic counterfactual, is discussed at length as a unique product of an interactional account of conversation.* 1. Introduction. Language is internally structured on several grammatical levels (Chomsky 1965), and is pragmatically organized at certain levels of communicative function (Searle 1969). But the interpretation of actual utterances is a situated accomplishment, depending crucially on several kinds of contexts (Garfinkel 1967, Cicourel 1974, Hymes 1974, Volosinov 1973). Given, then, that speech is both structured and situated, a central problem for any theory of utterance interpretation is to determine how grammatical knowledge interacts with participants' interpretive procedures for arriving at mutual understanding . The central questions of concern to us here are: How do participants use linguistic forms in social scenes as units of interpretation in organizing their conversation and other concerted activities? What range of contexts determines the interpretation of talk? And how can these contexts be described and validated as the participants' own categories? Two kinds of approaches to these questions are considered. The first is based upon the analysis oflinguistic forms, and attempts to account for what a speaker must know in order to interpret utterances. This linguistic approach assumes that speakers share an overlapping lexicon, grammar, and repertoire of speechact functions that are performed by using the lexico-grammar. The products of linguistic analysis are accounts of lexical senses of words, propositional * This paper developed gradually while the authors worked at The Rockefeller University. We thank Michael Cole for organizing a lively environment there that made interdisciplinary work possible. Charles and Marjorie Goodman helped immeasurably with some difficult points in the transcript. We received helpful comments on a first draft from Jack Bilmes, Courtney Cazden, Lindsey Churchill, Hugh Mehan, Hervé Varenne, and Hanni Woodbury. Most valuable was a detailed critique from Emanuel Schegloff—who helped us not only with particulars on every page, but actually reframed the paper with gently-phrased, difficult questions. The paper was rewritten with the memory of Albert E. Scheflen dominating our thoughts. 374 LINGUISTIC INDETERMINACY AND SOCIAL CONTEXT375 readings expressed by sentences, and the speech acts conventionally conveyed by utterance forms. For the problem of utterance interpretation, the limitations of the linguistic approach are several: most words have several senses; many sentences are multiply ambiguous as to which propositions they express; and virtually all speech acts are multi-functional and often equivocal as to what acts (as well as what level of act) they convey (Labov & Fanshel 1977). The linguistic approach, therefore, cannot explain how utterances are interpreted—in that it cannot specify those lexical senses, propositions, and speech acts to which speakers are oriented at given points in conversation. Well-defined contexts are as necessary for analysts as they are for parties to conversation. The second kind of approach to interpretation is based upon the analysis of social contexts; it attempts to account for what participants are doing with their conversation such that they can achieve consensus about what is going on at a given moment. This approach assumes that talk, without reference to the particulars ofits use, is fundamentally indeterminate; and that, in the course of organizing sensible moments with each other, people use talk as a social tool, relying on the social work they are doing together to specify the meaning of utterances. The products of...

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