Unsuccessful is the new successful

Sprogforskeren Deirdre Wilson skriver bl.a. følgende om det leksikalsk pragmatiske fænomen kategoriudvidelse:

Consider the category extension in (9), which was used by many commentators during Wimbledon 2003:

(9) Federer is the new Sampras

For many hearers, the encoded concept SAMPRAS would provide access to a wide array of encyclopaedic assumptions about Sampras, some of which will receive additional activation from the mention of Federer and from the discourse context, including the fact that the utterance was produced during Wimbledon 2003. Although these highly activated assumptions will differ from hearer to hearer, they are likely to include the information that Sampras is a formidably gifted natural player of a certain type, that he has won Wimbledon many times and played a leading role in the tournament over many years, and so on. In these circumstances, a hearer following the path of least effort and looking for true implications (or other positive cognitive effects) via mutual adjustment of content, context and cognitive effects is likely to arrive at an interpretation in which Sampras expresses an ad hoc concept SAMPRAS* which denotes not only Sampras but other players with these encyclopaedic attributes, and conclude that the speaker is claiming that Federer falls into this ad hoc category and is therefore likely to dominate Wimbledon for many years, etc.

Wilson, D. (2004) "Relevance and lexical pragmatics." UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 16: 343-360 (her)


Følgende eksempel er titlen på en sang skrevet af den danske sangskriver og musiker Torsten Larsen (klik her):

(1) Unsuccessful is the new successful

Følger man Wilson, kan man sige, at ordet successful generelt aktiverer et tilhørende koncept SUCCESSFUL, der specificerer en række fremtrædende encyklopædiske træk byggende på f.eks.

- at succes er lykkebringende
- at succes giver social agtelse
- at succes er noget, som det er ønskeligt at tilstræbe sig

I den specifikke ytringskontekst (1) udvides kategorien således, at modtager etablerer et ad hoc koncept SUCCESSFUL*, der tillader inklusion af andre egenskaber kendetegnet ved samme træk, og i denne kategori indplaceres den egenskab, der er specificeret ved konceptet UNSUCCESSFUL. Modtager antager altså, at afsender har sagt, at det er lykkebringende at være unsuccessful, at det giver social agtelse, at det er noget, som det er ønskeligt at tilstræbe sig, osv.

Den præcise beskaffenhed af de antagelser, ytringen aktiverer hos modtager, kan imidlertid være ubestemmelig: som modtager forholder man sig til dem, der giver relevans i konteksten, men antagelserne kan fremstå som enten mere eller mindre relevante. En sådan ubestemmelighed kan betragtes som en funktion af ytringens svage implikaturer [implikatur: en ikke-eksplicit kommunikeret antagelse] og er selvfølgelig afgørende for dens poetiske effekt:

An utterance that forces the hearer to supply a very specific premise or conclusion to arrive at an interpretation consistent with the principle of relevance has a very strong implicature. An utterance that can be given an interpretation consistent with the principle of relevance on the basis of different – though of course related – sets of premises and conclusions has a wide range of weak implicatures. Clearly, the weaker the implicatures, the less confidence the hearer can have that the particular premises or conclusions he supplies closely reflect the speaker’s thoughts, and this is where the indeterminacy lies.

Sperber, D. & D. Wilson (1987). ‘Precis of Relevance’. Behavioural and Brain Sciences 10(4):697-710

Modtager stimuleres altså yderligere ved, at det ikke er indlysende i hvilket omfang afsender – digteren – har ønsket at kommunikere netop disse svage implikaturer.


Var det ikke nogenlunde sådan, Torsten?