Habermas' Universal Pragmatics: Interpretation And Criticism

The present thesis,guided by Habermas's Universal Pragmatics, combined with discourse analysis and corpus linguistics, was exclusively devoted to the explanation and critique of Habermas's Universal Pragmatics. Transcription of tape-recordings of conversation in the process of inquiry performed by policemen in police station was used as data and analyzed within a framework which drew insights from Habermas's Universal Pragmatics. The results proved that Habermas's Universal Pragmatics is a good method to analyze conversation in real context, thus bridging pragmatics and philosophy of language from the perspective of Habermas's Universal Pragmatics.Firstly, the analysis and critique of Habermas's communication model showed that a more reasonable communication model should be based on the communication model formulated by Habermas, combined with Sperber & Wilson's ostensive-inferential communication model.Secondly, a consensus theory of meaning was formulated within the framework of Habermas's consensus theory of truth which was based on Habermas's Universal Pragmatics to explain the central topic in philosophy of language: the meaning of words and structures formed by words. The concept of group meaning was defined.Thirdly, The present study, practically, was conducted with an eye to revealing: (1) the exchange structure of conversation in the process of inquiry between policemen and other participants in terms of structural patterns as manifested as discourse develops; (2) to what extent and how does policeman and other participants'power relationship influence the pragmatic status quo of the various macro-aspects (such as exchange structure) and micro linguistic phenomena (such as turn-taking, interruption); (3) strategies by policemen and other participants as manifested in this interaction; (4) constructive proposals concerning the improvement of policemen's inquiry job in solving social conflicts, which drew insights from Habermas's Ideal Speech Situation theory. This thesis also proposes that communicative goal is a continuum from reaching understanding to reaching agreement or consensus which should still be divided into two parts: consensus in strong sense and consensus in weak sense.