Elin McCready

This book is an interdisciplinary project at the intersection of linguistics (semantics/pragmatics), experimental literature and art, with excursions into the environmental humanities. The book proposes a new style of artistic and literary practice which takes the space of interpretation as its artistic sandbox. The proposal is developed for the literary case and concretized using the tools of formal linguistics, specifically of formal models of linguistic meaning. In the process, the author calls into question the nature of the practice of linguistics as a science, and some foundational assumptions of that field; she also shows how to do a new kind of literary and conceptual work in the domain of interpretation and meaning assignment. The whole project has deep connections with games and rules, partly via the notion of constraint in experimental literary work and partly via the notion of interpretative rule in compositional formal semantics, and also (in its last parts) with the more-than-human as represented in language and the environmental humanities. This book will be of interest to readers based in fields including Linguistics, Literature, Philosophy and Environmental Humanities.

Signaling without Saying develops game-theoretic approaches to social meaning to model the phenomenon of dogwhistles, perhaps best known from political speech. These constructions involve language that sends one message to an out-group while at the same time sending a second-often taboo, controversial, or inflammatory-message to an in-group. Robert Henderson and Elin McCready show that dogwhistles should not be modeled in the same way as related language, like slurs, and nor should they be treated via standard Gricean implicatures computed over truth-conditional meaning; instead, they should be treated as primarily bearing social meaning, as understood by modern variationist sociolinguistic theories. The book identifies and models two different kinds of dogwhistle meaning, while also exploring a variety of related phenomena. The authors show how novel implicatures in the social meaning domain can arise when a listener detects a dogwhistle, and connect them to implicatures familiar in the truth-conditional domain. Social meaning, they argue, can be added to theories of trust in testimonial evidence, and dogwhistles can help to establish trust with an audience, even when expressing false propositions. The final chapter of the book looks at connections between dogwhistles and other issues important in epistemology and philosophy of language which might involve social meaning, such as standpoint theory.

This book explores the semantics and pragmatics of honorifics, expressions that indicate the degree of formality that a speaker feels is required in interacting with another person. Although these expressions are found in many languages worldwide, this volume is the first to approach the area from the perspective of formal semantics and pragmatics. Elin McCready treats honorifics - and expressions with honorific import - as carriers of expressive content that contributes either directly or indirectly to a register corresponding to the current formality of the speech situation. The analysis is applied to a variety of empirical examples, including utterance and argument honorifics in Japanese, Thai, and several other languages. It is proposed that the distinct strategies that different languages use for honorification have implications for the grammaticality of certain combination of honorifics. The volume also explores the connections between honorification and a range of theoretical issues in social meaning and the expression of gender. It will hence appeal not only to researchers in formal semantics and pragmatics, but also to sociolinguists, anthropological linguists, and philosophers.

This book explores the semantics and pragmatics of honorifics, expressions that indicate the degree of formality that a speaker feels is required in interacting with another person. Although these expressions are found in many languages worldwide, this volume is the first to approach the area from the perspective of formal semantics and pragmatics. Elin McCready treats honorifics - and expressions with honorific import - as carriers of expressive content that contributes either directly or indirectly to a register corresponding to the current formality of the speech situation. The analysis is applied to a variety of empirical examples, including utterance and argument honorifics in Japanese, Thai, and several other languages. It is proposed that the distinct strategies that different languages use for honorification have implications for the grammaticality of certain combination of honorifics. The volume also explores the connections between honorification and a range of theoretical issues in social meaning and the expression of gender. It will hence appeal not only to researchers in formal semantics and pragmatics, but also to sociolinguists, anthropological linguists, and philosophers.

This book is an exploration of how knowledge about the reliability of information sources manifests itself in linguistic phenomena and use. It focuses on cooperation in language use and on how considerations of reliability influence what is done with the information acquired through language. Elin McCready provides a detailed account of the phenomena of hedging and evidentiality and analyses them using tools from game theory, dynamic semantics, and formal epistemology. Hedging is argued to be a mechanism used by speakers to protect their reputations for cooperativity from damage inflicted by infelicitous discourse moves. The pragmatics of evidential use is also discussed in terms of the histories of interaction that influence reputation: the author argues that past experience with the evidence source indexed by the evidential determines how the process of adding information will proceed. The book makes many new connections between seemingly disparate aspects of linguistic meaning and practice. It will be of interest to specialists in semantics, pragmatics, and philosophy of language, as well as those in the fields of philosophy and cognitive science with an interest in language and epistemology.

This book is an exploration of how knowledge about the reliability of information sources manifests itself in linguistic phenomena and use. It focuses on cooperation in language use and on how considerations of reliability influence what is done with the information acquired through language. Elin McCready provides a detailed account of the phenomena of hedging and evidentiality and analyses them using tools from game theory, dynamic semantics, and formal epistemology. Hedging is argued to be a mechanism used by speakers to protect their reputations for cooperativity from damage inflicted by infelicitous discourse moves. The pragmatics of evidential use is also discussed in terms of the histories of interaction that influence reputation: the author argues that past experience with the evidence source indexed by the evidential determines how the process of adding information will proceed. The book makes many new connections between seemingly disparate aspects of linguistic meaning and practice. It will be of interest to specialists in semantics, pragmatics, and philosophy of language, as well as those in the fields of philosophy and cognitive science with an interest in language and epistemology.

JSAI (The Japanese Society for Arti?cial Intelligence) is a premier academic society that focuses on arti?cial intelligence in Japan and was established in 1986. JSAIpublishesjournalsoftheJSAIandbimonthlytransactions,andhosts 19 special interest groups. The JSAI annual conference attracts several hundred attendees each year. JSAI-isAI (JSAI International Symposia on Arti?cial Intelligence) 2009 was the First International Symposium, which hosted three co-located international workshops and one satellite workshop that had been selected by the JSAI-isAI 2009OrganizingCommittee. Thisisinsuccessiontotheinternationalworkshops co-located with the JSAI annual conferences since 2001. JSAI-isAI 2009 was successfully held during November 19-20 in Tokyo, Japan; 158 people from 16 countries participated in JSAI-isAI 2009. Thisvolumeof"NewFrontiersinArti?cialIntelligence:JSAI-isAI2009Wo- shops" is the proceedings of JSAI-isAI 2009. The organizers of the four wo- shops, LENLS, JURISIN, KCSD, and LLLL, hosted by JSAI-isAI 2009,selected 24 papers out of 61 presentations. This has resulted in the excellent selection of papersthat arerepresentativeof someof the topics of AI researchboth in Japan and in other parts of the world.