Abstract
Arundale (2008) argues that the conceptualization of communication as encoding and decoding that frames broadly Gricean accounts of meaning is problematic in view of a distinct, empirically grounded conceptualization of communication as interactional achievement. Intention-based accounts of meaning are therefore problematic as well. Wedgwood's (2011) rebuttal of Arundale (2008) collapses because of his failure both to acknowledge and to carefully examine the assumptive commitments framing his encoding/decoding understanding as distinct from my interactional achievement understanding of human communication.
About the author
Robert B. Arundale is Professor Emeritus of Communication at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. His research interests concern issues in language pragmatics as they relate to understanding language use in interpersonal communication, with particular attention to developing a theory of communication and of facework that is informed by the insights on human interaction provided by conversation analysis. Recent publications on this topic include “Constituting Face in Conversation,” Journal of Pragmatics, Vol. 42, 2010.
©[2012] by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
