Zsuzsanna Schnell Department of Cultural Theory and Applied Communication Studies, University of Pécs, Hungary
Background Our study examines properties that describe parameters of the context of interpretation itself: meta-context. We propose a model that examines the effect of optimal relevance and thus of mental-state specific context on interpretation (Sperber-Wilson 1986). Method Our experimental pragmatic study investigates preschoolers’ social cognitive skills, and in view of these, their ability to decipher opaque constructions like metaphor, irony and verbal vs non-verbal humor. Different contexts offer different cues for interpretation. We test our hypothesis whether context targeting mental states significantly improves interpretation of non-compositional meaning like in the case of idioms, humor or irony, whereas non mental state specific, regular linguistic and situational context aids but does not significantly affect pragmatic meaning construction. Furthermore, we examine the role of ‘modality as context’ in the verbal (linguistic) vs. visual (nonverbal) domain in our non-verbal humor condition. Effects of modality-given context are also investigated using Spearman’s correlations, Mann-Whitney and ANOVA in SPSS. Results, Conclusion: Mental state specific context significantly improves comprehension of pragmatic utterances to an extent that it can serve as a compensatory strategy. Effect of context was more pronounced in the inter-contextual (visual vs verbal context) comparison than in an intra-contextual (verbal: contextualized vs decontextualized) dimensions. We suggest a model of context-sensitive interpretation and claim that usability of context awareness is a tool for identifying optimal relevance (Sperber-Wilson 1986, Giora 2001) very early on. Our findings confirm results in developmental research that surface cues help in the recognition of communicative intent (Csibra 2010) and contribute to the successful resolution of the intended meaning at hand (Schnell 2019).
