Indirect Pragmatic Negation And Its Conventions Of Use

Negation is a way to reach the contrary of something, a way to express a different viewon something, and etc. Since it is always connected with "being negative" and "no", it islikely that people achieve it indirectly by way of implicating. And all pragmatic studies onnegation (Shen, 1993;Xu, 1994;Horn, 1985;He, 2002) have not included as a sub-categorythe type of negation which negates not by way of any negating devices. The author terms thissub-type of pragmatic negation as Indirect Pragmatic Negation. This dissertation offers asystematic description and illustration of Indirect Pragmatic Negation from the perspectivesof its definition, functioning types and most importantly, the rule that regulates its usage. Inexploring this rule, the present study adheres to the language usage conventions, a radicallydistinctive approach from the traditional implicature theory of Cooperative Principle.The dissertation addresses the issues of Indirect Pragmatic Negation and theconventional interpretation of it by proposing the following key arguments.First of all, Indirect Pragmatic Negation rejects the necessary role of applying formaldevices in negating behaviors. It is a type of pragmatic negation that searches for otherpatterns except the formal way. These patterns are so indirect that if they are taken out of thecertain context, the meaning of negation is detached.Second, people choose these Indirect Pragmatic Negation patterns because they areforced to abide by some language usage conventions. What really happens in theconversations is that people judge from these conventions of language usage, together withcertain common senses, and infer the indirect refusal and denial successfully.By these central arguments, the dissertation has called the attention of pragmatic studieson the notion of Indirect Pragmatic Negation, which presents the key pragmatic concern ofindirectness and implicature. This dissertation has also made the attempt to interpret negationimplicature using language usage conventions, which, hopefully, may encourage futureresearch on conventions regulating other categories of conversational implicatures.