Christy in Norfolk, Virginia, shares a funny story about how she and a friend failed to communicate about an invitation. The friend often mentioned that she and some pals were going to a club, assuming that Christy would understand that she was also invited. Christy assumed she wasn’t invited just because she was hearing about the plans. In other words, she missed what linguists call the implicature of her friend’s statement, failing to understand that an invitation was implied. So much of conversational pragmatics involves renegotiation, restatement, and clarification, but that didn’t happen in this case. When it finally did, Christy went along to the club — and ended up meeting her future husband! This is part of a complete episode.
When you’re talking about the location of an inanimate object, is it okay to say that it lives there, as in The peanut butter lives in that cabinet or The flashlight lives on that shelf? Strictly speaking, of course, that object isn’t...
Sean in Oneonta, New York, says that when he was growing up in New Jersey, his family would pile in the car and set off on a surprise adventure, whether a short distance or long, and the kids would be told only that they were going on Buxtehude...
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