Discourse, Knowledge, Context

Abstract

Within a broad definition of pragmatics in terms of the structures of discourse controlled by the communicative context, this paper focuses on the crucial role of the knowledge of the speech participants. This knowledge is managed by a special epistemic device that is part of the mental context model of the participants. In order to be able to adapt their text or talk to the knowledge of the recipients, this epistemic device enables language users to engage in various strategies to infer such knowledge.