Naturalized Inferentialism: A step towards social-normative pragmatics

Project Description

The general aim of the project is to develop the inferentialist view on language and communication in a specific naturalistic way by connecting it with empirical research in experimental linguistics, neurolinguistics, and psychology. I believe that making such connections can be mutually beneficial. On the one hand, the accommodation of empirical data can support inferentialism on empirical grounds. On the other hand, interpreting empirical data from the perspective of inferentialism can lead to important improvements in our understanding of how language is established, used, and maintained in linguistic communities.

I pursue the general aim in three directions. First, I focus on which empirical methods can be adopted by inferentialists, with a specific focus on the method of validity judgment tasks. Second, I develop inferentialism as a specific version of social-normative pragmatics informed by the psychological research on commitments. Third, I develop a specific inferentialist view on linguistic processing informed by the neurolinguistic research on the processing of polysemes.

As part of the project, I spent two years as a research fellow at Radboud University Nijmegen, where I had a chance to cooperate with leading experts on social-normative pragmatics.

Principal investigator

• Mgr. Matej Drobňák, Ph.D. (Philosophical Faculty UHK)

Timeframe

• 2022–2025

Identification

• GN22-05200O

Outputs