Its nothing, really: A relevance-theoretic account of meiosis

Stephen Self, GIAL stephen_self@gial.edu UTA Student Conference in Linguistics & TESOL 22 February 2013 1. Abstract
I argue that, from an RT perspective, meiosis can be recognized as comprising two distinct types that differ in the methods they employ to achieve relevance: ad hoc meiosis, which is closely akin to the classical figure known as tapinosis, uses ad hoc concept formation to express the strong contextual implication that the speaker feels a given characterization applies only to a lesser degree; echoic meiosis uses echo as broadly defined in the RT literature to express a range of weaker contextual implications such as that the speaker does not want to appear immodest or that she does not wish to reveal the full extent of her talent. A chief distinction between echoic meiosis that is not involved in irony and verbal irony proper is the strength of the dissociative stance taken by the speaker. Irony involves a more complete rejection of the attributed thought or utterance than echoic meiosis.

3. Background of Relevance Theory

3.1 Gricean Pragmatics In 1967, British philosopher of language H. Paul Grice delivered the William James lectures at Harvard and laid out a theory of implicature. Speakers convey more with their words than the sum of their literal meanings warrant. Speakers and listeners can calculate the inferences drawn from their words. Speakers intend for the hearer to calculate. There has to be a shared system in place to facilitate this cooperation. Grice initiated an inferential approach to utterance interpretation. Rather than relying on decoding alone, the hearer constructs a hypothesis about the speakers meaning based on: 1) the sentence meaning of the uttered sentence, 2) the background (contextual) assumptions of the context in which the utterance was made, and 3) general communicative principles that speakers are expected to observe. 3.2 Relevance Theory RT combines the basic insight of Grice with a reliance on cognitive science and psycholinguistics to seek a cognitively-realistic explanation of human communication as ostensive inferential communication. RT relies on two basic principles. The First, or Cognitive, Principle of Relevance states: Human cognition tends to be geared to the maximization of relevance. The Second, or Communicative, Principle of Relevance states: Every act of ostensive communication (e.g. an utterance) communicates a presumption of its own optimal relevance. Relevance here means the ability to affect an existing assumption and thereby achieve positive cognitive effects while at the same time requiring as little effort to process as possible. n assumption is relevant to the extent that the positive cognitive effects achieved when it is optimally processed are large and the effort required to achieve these positive cognitive effects is small. Positive cognitive effects can be achieved in three ways: 1) by supporting and strengthening an existing assumption; 2) by contradicting and weakening/eliminating an existing assumption; 3) by combining with an existing assumption to produce a new conclusion.

2. Meiosis exemplified
(1) Catullus 1 To whom do I dedicate this fine, new book, just recently polished off with a dry pumice stone? Cornelius: to you, for you were in the habit of thinking that my trifles were worth something, even then, when you alone of the Italians dared to unfold every age in just three volumes... learned ones, by Jove, and much labored over. So take this little bookwhatever it is, such as it isand may it, O Patron Maiden, remain everlasting for more than one lifetime.

4. Meiosis
Little work has been done on meiosis from within the framework of RT, so part of the work in what follows will be to adapt the few statements that have been made on the trope by theorists and researchers working within RT to a fuller analysis of the figure. Page 1 of 6

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A figure of speech which contains an understatement for emphasis: often used ironically, and also for dramatic effect, in the attainment of simplicity. In everyday speech it is sometimes used in gentle irony, especially when describing something spectacular or impressive as rather good, or words to that effect (Cuddon 1998:501). Meiosis involves reference to something with a name disproportionately lesser than its nature (Burton 2007: s.v. meiosis). Understatement deliberately expresses an idea as less important than it actually is, either for ironic emphasis or for politeness and tact.In a more important way, understatement should be used as a tool for modesty and tactfulness (Harris 2011: s.v. understatement).

(3) (4)

Verbal irony is often felt to derive its chief effects from a more or less complete discrepancy or incongruity between what is being said and what is actually meant (Cuddon 1998:429-430; Berntsen & Kennedy 1996:21; Colston 1997:44). For instance, in the case of the oft-repeated example from Sperber and Wilson (1995:239) given in (7), an ironic interpretation arises only when the utterance is made in some adverse context, such as that of a downpour during the picnic. (7) It's a lovely day for a picnic, indeed. On the other hand, describing a staggering drunk by using the utterance in (8) is not so completely inappropriate to context. The speaker acknowledges the true fact that Ted is inebriated; what is at stake is merely a question of degree. (8) Ted was a little tipsy (Roberts & Kreuz 1994:159). Meiosis does not involve a complete mismatch between the explicature of an utterance and the specific context in which it is uttered. Thus Berntsen and Kennedy can observe that while both irony and meiosis involve conflict between the viewpoint literally expressed and what the receiver takes to be senders view (1996:22), the form of the conflict is different for each trope. Irony uses contrast or opposition. Understatement uses reduction (Berntsen & Kennedy 1996:22). 4.2 Two kinds of meiosis Still, there is, perhaps, a useful intuition behind Harris remark on the differing motivations for understatement. There do seem to be at least two different kinds of meiosis or rather two different strategies involved in the use and construction of the trope. Berntsen and Kennedy (1996:22) offer another pretheoretical hint at the distinction I am beginning to make here by noting: When understatement serves to camouflage an unpleasant fact, for example, we may say that its meaning is simply more (i.e. worse) than what is literally expressed. However, understatement often signifies an attitude rather than merely hinting at a camouflaged idea. Let us compare the statement in (8) or that in (9) below:

4.1 Irony and meiosis confused The pair of motivations attributed to meiosis in (4) is curious because they seem to constitute opposites: the first seeks to draw attention to the converse, which is the more correct state of affairs, as a way of emphasizing it; the other seeks to draw attention away from the converse, which is out of keeping with the speakers desired representation, as a form of social finesse or savoir faire. The problem in Harris discussion is his mixing of meiosis and irony. This same issue vitiates the example Burton (2007) provides, given in (5) below, which was drawn from the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. In the movie, a character speaks of his amputated leg by saying: (5) Its just a flesh wound. This example serves to illustrate not simply meiosis, but meiosis serving irony as a kind of stacked trope. The humor of the line derives from the character's quote of a conventional meiosis used to make light of an injury in a situation where it is completely inappropriate. A similar flaw attends the following example given in Harris (2011) and repeated in Herrero (2009:53): (6) The 1906 San Francisco earthquake interrupted business somewhat in the downtown area.

The effect of this statement is achieved through echoing the type of statement made by newscasters and observers when a small public disruption breaks out and applying it in a situation where no one would ever use such a description while believing it to be remotely accurate.

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The scratch my client gave to the plaintiff [spoken by an attorney referring in court to the wound his client inflicted on the plaintiff] (Herrero 2009:55). with the following example:

(10) Yes, I know a bit about rocks [spoken by a professional geologist when asked if she knew anything about rock formations] (Herrero 2009:53). The statement in (10) clearly stands in as a more modest version of a statement like Yes, I'm an expert in geology. There is a distinction to be made between example (10), which aims at conveying the speaker's attitude toward self-aggrandizement and her allegiance to social principles of modesty more than it does at providing any useful information about her professional knowledge of rock formations, and the examples in (8) and (9), which seek to replace a negative portrayal of a given situation that is unflattering and clearly contrary to the speakers desires with a less negative one that somehow better accords with what the speaker thinks is acceptable. I will make the claim that, from an RT perspective, these two differing uses or strategies of meiosis actually involve two distinct ways of achieving relevance. 4.2.1 Meiosis 1: ad hoc concept meiosis The meiosis strategy at work in examples (8) and (9) involves a process of ad hoc concept formation such as Sperber and Wilson invoke to explain the use of metaphor (Sperber & Wilson 1995:231-237; Sperber & Wilson 2008). In Carston's (2010:218) terms, ad hoc concept formation is a type of linguistically-uncontrolled or free pragmatic enrichment of linguisticallyencoded meaning. In this process, the lexically-encoded concept of a given word, other encoded concepts in the utterance, and context all guide the hearer to modulate the meaning of the word through narrowing or broadening/loosening its lexically-encoded meaning (Wilson & Carston 2007:235-239; Sperber & Wilson 2008:181-185). The result is an occasionspecific sense (Wilson & Carston 2007:230) which is formalized in the RT literature with an asterisk following the capitalized term that represents the context-independent lexical concept (e.g. DRINK*). As with ad hoc concepts in metaphors, those involved in meiosis also rely on concept broadening or loosening, since the literal meaning of the encoded concept is not strictly preserved in the ad hoc concept (Sperber & Wilson 2008:182). Applying the term scratch to an open wound broadens the meaning of the meiotic term to

encompass denotations normally included in more serious designations. The ad hoc concepts formed in meiosis are distinct from those involved in metaphors, however, because with novel, highly poetic metaphors, the lexically-encoded meaning of the concept is broadened to such a high degree that it departs significantly from the encoded meaning and gives rise to a range of potential weak implicatures that the hearer must construct and may continue to construct almost ad infinitum (Sperber & Wilson 1995:236). In meiosis, the ad hoc concept is usually more constrained in the manner of a standardized metaphor, typically giving access to an encyclopedic schema or entry in which one or two highly accessible assumptions dominate. Sperber and Wilson (1995:236) provide example (11) to demonstrate this constraining effect with a metaphor: (11) This room is a pigsty. The stereotypical association of pigsties with filth automatically leads to the strong implication that the room is filthy. In a similar way, what constrains the interpretation of the ad hoc concept in this type of meiosis is its scalar relationship with the lexically-encoded concept it replaces. Both drunk and tipsy entail inebriation; the latter word simply indicates a lesser degree of it than the former. Similarly, scratch and wound are both examples of physical injury; the former merely indicates a lesser degree of injury than the latter. With meiosis, it is simply the case that the scale has been reduced; a term associated with a lesser degree has been applied to a situation associated with a higher degree. Within the tradition of classical rhetoric, there is another name for this mechanism as a special subtype of meiosis, tapinosis (Burton 2007:s.v. tapinosis), a peculiarity which lends support to the idea of separating off this ad hoc concept strategy of meiosis from the rest of the trope. 4.2.2 Meiosis 2: echoic meiosis The second type or strategy of meiosis exemplified in (10) above is more closely aligned with the RT treatment of verbal irony. Indeed, although explicit treatments of meiosis within the RT framework are rare, the few mentions of the trope in the main literature (i.e. Sperber & Wilson 1995:238; Seto 1998:249-251) classify it together with irony. As in the standard RT analysis of verbal irony, this type of meiosis is echoic; that is, it expresses an interpretation of a thought or utterance of someone other than the speaker herself at that point in time (Sperber & Wilson 1995:238; Wilson 2009:197). In expressing this interpretation of anothers thought or utterance, the speaker conveys her own attitude toward it, typically dissociating from it in some Page 3 of 6

way. The relevance of such an utterance depends to an extent on the information conveyed about the speakers attitude toward the opinion echoed (Sperber & Wilson 1995:239). I will argue that a distinction between this echoic meiosis and echoic verbal irony is that, in the case of the former, the speaker does not reject the attributed thought or utterance as strongly as is usually the case with the latter (Sperber & Wilson 1995:239; Wilson 2009:202-203), if indeed at all. One important point to note before moving on is that this second, echoic strategy of meiosis crucially involves the first, ad hoc concept strategy and is not entirely separate from it. In example (10), part of the overall meiosis depends on the construction of an ad hoc concept A BIT* whose denotation has broadened to encompass such quantities of knowledge about rock formations as the professional geologist feels or wishes to portray she possesses. This meiosis, however, does not simply stop with the creation of the ad hoc concept, but uses that concept within an echoic utterance. 4.2.2.1 Controversy over the RT (echoic) account of irony Most criticisms of an entirely echoic account of verbal irony stem from the list of conditions Sperber and Wilson (1995:240) assert must be satisfied in order to decide that a given utterance is ironic, namely a) recognition of the utterance as echoic; b) identification of the source of the opinion echoed; and c) recognition that the speakers attitude to the opinion echoed is one of rejection or dissociation (cf. Seto 1998:240). The claim by detractors is that not all of these conditions can be satisfied in all instances of reported verbal irony; particular exception has been taken to the second condition (Yamanashi 1998:279; Herrero 2009:32-33, 177). In response, Sperber and Wilson (1998:284, 288) have noted that their technical use of the term echo is deliberately broad, and goes beyond what would generally be understood by the ordinary-language word echo. In particular, they claim that an echoic utterance may echo everything from what was just said to real or imaginary attributed thoughts to standard norms, expectations, or specific desires (Sperber & Wilson 1998:284). A partial result of this conceptual breadth is the rejection in Sperber and Wilsons account of a hard-and-fast boundary between ironic and non-ironic utterances; rather, the array of attitudes that can be expressed by echoic utterances so broadly construed is indefinite, such that there can be cases where irony seems to mix with other attitudes or where the utterance is neither clearly ironic nor clearly non-ironic (Sperber & Wilson 1998:287; Sperber & Wilson 1981:315).

4.2.2.2

Echoic meiosis, false modesty, and irony

The preceding explains why echoic meiosis is the figure that underlies what many recognize as false modesty. When a speaker utters a statement as in (10), she is echoing a conventional, socially acceptable norm of modest behavior. As with any echoic/attributive use of language, she may express an attitude of approval toward the echoed value or one of rejection/dissociation. The greater the degree of rejection or dissociation expressed, the more the modesty is truly false and the closer the trope comes to becoming an example of irony. Indeed, this close connection between echoic meiosis and irony explains the widespread confusion between the two tropes discussed above. That the two tropes could so blend together is understandable within RT since a standard tactic of the RT approach to literal-versus-figurative language has been to treat them as lying along a single continuum (Wilson & Carston 2007:235, 240; Sperber & Wilson 1995:231-237). It is also understandable within my particular analysis since, as we have seen, the necessary condition for meiosis is an ad hoc concept to express a mitigated degree of the lexically-encoded concept that forms its starting point. Echoic meiosis combines this ad hoc concept with attributive language use and, usually, some degree of dissociation from the attributed thought or utterance. 4.2.2.3 Echoic meiosis and moral asymmetry in irony A further point of comparison between echoic meiosis and verbal irony is slightly more subtle but nonetheless important. In their reply to dissenters from the notion that all verbal irony is necessarily echoic, Sperber and Wilson (1998:285) contend that the echoic theory of irony explains a common observation about the moral asymmetry of irony that has often been remarked on but never fully explained. In particular, they note that verbal irony usually involves attributing blame through apparent praise, as in example (12), but seldom praise through apparent blame (Sperber & Wilson 1998:285, 290). (12) Well you handled that well [where the hearer actually handled the situation quite poorly]. As Sperber and Wilson (1981:312) explain: Standards or rules of behaviour are culturally defined, commonly known, and frequently invoked; they are thus always available for echoic mention. On the other hand, critical judgments are particular to a given Page 4 of 6

individual or occasion, and are thus only occasionally available for mention. While it is common to invoke a standard of success or beauty and use an ironic echo of it to express disapproval and blame, the ability to do the reverse requires special circumstances. For example, Sperber and Wilson (1998:288) discuss the case in (13) quoted from Hamamoto (1998:268), where Kyoko has just learned that her husband Jiro illicitly used his professional travel expenses to purchase his wife a personal gift. She says approvingly: (13) You're so naughty. Here, the use of a negative evaluator to express a positive evaluation depends upon a situation in which the hearer has not simply failed to live up to socially and professionally accepted standards of behavior, but has actually flouted and consciously gone against them in a way that the speaker approves of. This is obviously a somewhat specialized situation. Echoic meiosis often relies upon a similarly specialized situation, namely that in which the speaker is encouraged to display less modesty than would normally be acceptable. Imagine a party at which an attendee is introducing her personal guest, a bestselling novelist, to her friend who is not familiar with his work. The following exchange ensues: (14) Attendee introducing writer: This is my good friend X; he's a very accomplished novelist. Attendee's friend to writer: You're an author, huh? Are you famous? Writers reply: I have some readers. In this context, both the introducers and her friends utterances encourage the novelist to flout modesty and truly comment on his credentials as a bestselling author. Presumably they would both approve were he to do so. Instead, he offers an echoic meiosis involving the ad hoc concept SOME* that carries a strong scalar implication of more than I would like to admit presently. That the attendee and her friend would in fact approve the authors flouting of the modesty convention can be seen by the naturalness of the follow-up remark in (15) spoken by either the attendee or her friend or both: (15) Oh come on, X. I'll bet you've sold thousands of copies! The situation in (14) and (15) is thus a version of that in (13) seen from the perspective of Jiro, the husband, as he is contemplating abusing his travel

expenses in order to purchase something nice for his wife, Kyoko. The exchange might run something like: (16) Kyoko: Couldnt you just get me a small gift? Come on, live a little! Jiro: I guess I could be a little bit naughty. In the case of this peculiar amoral irony, the utterance conveys explicitly negative content from which the speaker strongly dissociates in order to indicate a positive attitude toward the socially unacceptable behavior. In the case of echoic meiosis, the utterance conveys explicitly negative form (in the sense that it disparages or belittles) from which the speaker weakly dissociates in order to indicate an ambivalent attitude toward the socially unacceptable behavior. What the speaker echoes in her meiotic utterance is the attributed thought or utterance of what would be more in keeping with social standards of behavior. In more explicitly polemical circumstances, the speaker may wish to assert via echoic meiosis that, contrary to her critics low estimations, she has something to be (falsely) modest about. In this case, she may more strongly dissociate from an attributed thought or utterance that represents the content of what her critics actually say about her or her work. If so, she will have begun to cross the invisible line between strictly echoic meiosis and true irony (i.e. real false modesty) involving echoic meiosis, such that her seemingly self-deprecating remarks carry strong implicatures of self-assertion and even pride.

5. Herrero 2009
The one treatment of meiosis of any real length from within a framework that relies somewhat on RT is the account of meiosis in Herrero (2009:229-248). A key component of Herrero's approach, which is grounded in the classical and Gricean notion of meaning reversal (Herrero 2009:54), is the claim that the speaker and hearer undergo two different cognitive operations, mitigation and strengthening respectively (2009:231). That is, the speaker moves from a higher to a lower value of the concept that is represented, in order to derive [her] intended range of contextual effects (Herrero 2009:232), while the hearer moves from a lower to a higher value of the concept represented...in order to retrieve certain contextual effects that the speaker wanted to minimise (Herrero 2009:236). Herrero thus interprets the speakers goal in using meiosis as being to minimize and mitigate the impact of the contextual or cognitive effects that the unmitigated utterance would have had (2009:236, 248). Two key problems vitiate Herreros discussion. First, in replying to claims in Hamamoto (1998), Yamanashi (1998), and Seto (1998) that not all instances of irony are echoic and that Page 5 of 6

some uses of irony rely on a semantic reversal mechanism (see especially Seto (1998:244-245)), Sperber and Wilson (1998:290) contend that the notion of two separate mechanisms being involved in the interpretation of verbal irony is quite implausible. We could lodge a similar complaint against Herreros approach to meiosis. Why would the speaker and hearer utilize quite distinct cognitive operations when the goal is one and the same: to maximize relevance? Moreover, Herreros claim that the speaker seeks to minimize cognitive effects appears to run counter to a central insight of RT. By minimizing cognitive effects, a speaker would only decrease the chances that her utterance would be relevant to her hearers, violating the Presumption of Optimal Relevance. It is true that a speaker who employs this first strategy or type of meiosis wishes to understate the impact of a given characterization and thus give rise to different cognitive effects; however, the last thing such a speaker would want to do while attempting this procedure would be to appear irrelevant.

Herrero Ruiz, Javier. 2009. Understanding tropes: At the crossroads between pragmatics and cognition (Duisberg Arbeiten zur Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaft 75). Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Kreuz, Roger J. and Richard M. Roberts. 1995. Two cues for verbal irony: Hyperbole and the ironic tone of voice. Metaphor and Symbol 10(1):21-31. Roberts, Richard M. and Roger J. Kreuz. 1994. Why do people use figurative language?. Psychological Science 5(3):159-163. Seto, Ken-ichi. 1998. On non-echoic irony. In Robyn Carston and Seiji Uchida (eds.), Relevance theory: Applications and implciations (Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 37), 239-255. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Sperber, Dan and Deirdre Wilson. 1981. Irony and the use-mention distinction. In P. Cole (ed.), Radical pragmatics, 295-318. New York: Academic Press. Sperber, Dan and Deirdre Wilson. 1995. Relevance. 2nd ed Edition. Oxford: Blackwell. Sperber, Dan and Deirdre Wilson. 1998. Irony and relevance: A reply to Seto, Hamamoto, and Yamanashi. In Robyn Carston and Seiji Uchida (eds.), Relevance theory: Applications and implications (Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 37), 283293. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Sperber, Dan and Deirdre Wilson. 2008. A deflationary account of metaphors. In Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr. (ed.), The Camrbridge hanbook of metaphor and thought., 84-103. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wilson, Deirdre. 2000. Metarepresentation in linguistic communication. In Dan Sperber (ed.), Metarepresentations: A Multidisciplinary Perspective., 411-448. New York: Oxford University Press. Wilson, Deirdre. 2009. Irony and metarepresentation. UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 21:183-226. Wilson, Deirdre and Robyn Carston. 2007. A unitary approach to lexical pragmatics: Relevance, inference, and ad hoc concepts. In Noel Burton-Roberts (ed.), Pragmatics, 230-259. Palgrave Advances in LinguisticsLondon: Palgrave Macmillan. Wilson, Deirdre and Dan Sperber. 1988. Mood and the analysis of non-declarative sentences. In J. Moravcsik and C. Taylor (eds.), Human agency: Language, duty, and value, 77-101. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Wilson, Deirdre and Dan Sperber. 2004. Relevance theory. In Laurence R. Horn and Gregory Ward (eds.), The handbook of pragmatics, 607-632. Oxford: Blackwell. Yamanashi, Masa-aki. 1998. Some issues in the treatment of irony and related tropes. In Robyn Carston and Seiji Uchida (eds.), Relevance theory: Applications and implications (Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 37), 271-281. Amsterdam and Philadelpha: John Benjamins.

6. References
Berntsen, Dorthe and John M. Kennedy. 1996. Unresolved contradictions specifying attitudesin metaphor, hyperbole, understatement and tautology. Poetics 24:13-29. Burton, Gideon. 2007. Silva rhetoricae: The forest of rhetoric. http://rhetoric.byu.edu/ (accessed 1 November 2012) Carston, Francis. 2002. Thoughts and utterances: The pragmatics of explicit communication. Oxford: Blackwell. Carston, Francis. 2010. Explicit communication and free pragmatic enrichment. In Belen Soria and Esther Romero (eds.), Explicit communication: Robyn Carstons pragmatics, 217-285. Hampshire, Great Britain: Palgrave Macmillan. Carston, Francis and Catherine Wearing. 2011. Metaphor, hyperbole, and simile: A pragmatic approach. Language and cognition 3(2):283-312. Colston, Herbert L. 1997. I've never seen anything like it: Overstatement, understatement, and irony. Metaphor and Symbol 12(1):43-58. Cuddon, J. A. 1998. The Penguin dictionary of literary terms and literary theory. Revised by C. E. Preston. London: Penguin Books. Hamamoto, Hideki. 1998. Irony from a cognitive perspective. In Robyn Carston and Seiji Uchida (eds.), Relevance theory: Applications and implications (Pragmatics & Beyond New Series37), 257-270. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Harris, Robert A. 2011. A handbook of rhetorical devices. http://www.virtualsalt.com/rhetoric.htm (31 October 2012)

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