Fiction and Common Ground: A Workspace Account

old_uid16559
titleFiction and Common Ground: A Workspace Account
start_date2018/10/15
schedule14h-16h
onlineno
location_infosalle séminaire du DEC
summaryBecause Stalnaker’s common ground framework is focussed on cooperative information exchange, it is challenging to model fictional discourse. To this end, I develop an extension of Stalnaker’s analysis of assertion that is inspired by Matravers’ theory of fiction interpretation. Assertions and fictional statements are modelled as proposals to first update a temporal common ground : The ‘workspace’. At the end of the discourse, ‘assertive’ or ‘fictive closure’ is performed ; The content of the workspace is added to the common ground directly (for assertions) or as ‘parafictional information’ under an “In story S, p”-operator (for fictional statements). I argue that pronominal anaphora across mixed parafictional/metafictional discourse (e.g. In The Lord of the Rings, Frodoi goes through an immense mental struggle. Hei is an intriguing fictional character !) poses a problem for the workspace account and evaluate different possible solutions based on Zalta’s logic of abstract object and Recanati’s dot-object analysis of fictional characters.
responsiblesTerrone, Contesi, Dokic