Social Presuppositions
Paul Portner, Georgetown University
The presuppositions of a conversation are the propositions that the participants mutually (if tacitly) agree to treat as true for purposes of the conversation (Stalnaker, 1974). Linguists usually think of presuppositions as being motivated by the communicative goals of the conversation; for example, something may be presupposed because both parties think it is actually true, or because one wants to assume it for the sake of argument, or because one person believes it and the other prefers not to dissuade them. I call these FACTUAL PRESUPPOSITIONS. I will argue that, in addition to factual presuppositions, some presuppositions often arise because of the social relations that hold between individuals. These SOCIAL PRESUPPOSITIONS guide what is perceived as appropriate, rather than (as with factual presuppositions) what is perceived as felicitous.
The concept of factual presuppositions can be used to explain cases where the social relation between speaker and addressee has semantic consequences. One example concerns the meanings of certain speech act adverbials like frankly, as in (1).
(1) Frankly, I don’t think your beard suits you.
Social relations are also relevant to explaining when performative readings are available for deontic modals, as in (2).
(2) If you are done with your burger, you should clear your table.
In the talk, I sketch some steps towards developing a formal theory of social presuppositions and attempt to use it to give a more precise account of these phenomena.