Argumentative Abduction in the Interpretation Process: A Pragma-Dialectical Study of an Ironic Utterance

Abstract

In deviations of intent, from that expressed by the standard or ordinary use of language, abductive reasoning necessarily plays an important role. In such cases, to cause the desired effect in the audience, the speaker usually utters some “mysterious” words and relies on the hearer’s abductive ability to solve the enigma. This abductive ability is mostly based on the interlocutors’ knowledge of the common dialogic framework, and both speaker and listener have to apply this reasoning to arrive at successful communication. Understanding this exchange as an argumentative process, this kind of “guessing” can be evaluated in a reasoned way. As a practical case, in this contribution, I analyze an ironic utterance from a pragma-dialectical perspective. By doing so, I propose that these kinds of hypotheses that are drawn up in the interpretation process could be evaluated in an argumentative way, as answering certain critical questions regarding the theoretical norms of extended pragma-dialectics.