The Effect Of Abductive Cognition On Pragmatic Inference

This thesis applies Peirce's theory of abduction to investigate the pragmatic inference, aiming at finding the abduction's role of bridging in the process of pragmatic inference.The pragmatic inference provides further information which is not essential to the interpretation of a discourse, but which helps strengthen its interpretation in the specific context. In the process of pragmatic inference, the listener can quickly decode the literal meaning and generate explicature according to its specific context, namely, the complete propositional content of the discourse, and then introduce more significant propositions, such as, higher-order explicature and implicature. However, pragmatic inference can neither explain clearly why the complicated inference between decoding and explicature can be accomplished so fast, nor explain clearly how our brains work during the inferential process. Much more researches need to be carried out in order to reveal the exact nature of bridging in abductive cognition.In the interpretation of abduction, Peirce argued that, besides deduction and induction, there is a third mode of inference which he called "hypothesis" or "abduction". It is neither deduction which moves from a general rule to specific cases nor induction which moves from specific cases to a generality. It is the inference of the case from the rule and the result. In Peirce's later works, abduction, deduction and induction become interacting aspects with different epistemological functions. In Farm's interpretations of Peirce's theory, abduction constitutes the "first stage" of scientific inquiries and of any interpretive processes. The first stage, abduction comes up with a hypothesis to explain the initial observations. The second stage, predictions are derived from a suggested hypothesis by deduction. And the third stage, the credibility of that hypothesis is estimated through its predictions by induction.Thus abduction is a creative act to propose an explanatory hypothesis. It is not only a strict and rational logic form, but also a natural instinct. Accordingly, we experience a surprise when the observed fact is against our background expectation. The experience brings us genuine doubt. Genuine doubt forces us to interrogate the surprising fact, and then to seek backwards the reason behind the fact and generate a new hypothesis to explain the meaning of the observed fact. Abduction is referred to as inference to the best explanation. This is precisely the way that abduction works in relation to the interpretation of pragmatic inference.By analyzing the Cross-examination in Courtroom and News Texts, this thesis explores abductive cognition of the two types of discourses through the logical nature in the pragmatic inference. After contrasting abduction with the pragmatic inference, we drew a conclusion that the abductive cognition serves as a bridging function during the process of pragmatic inference.