The Cognitive Turn into Pragmatics

Bruno Ambroise

Abstract

The cognitive turn in Pragmatics. Philosophical consequences of a tran satlantic round-trip This paper aims at retracing a twofold evolution, both historical and conceptual, which occurred in a recent scientific field: pragmatics. Often qualified as «the study of what language does in context», it was born in the middle of the 20th century from the convergent thoughts of some anthropologists and philosophers concerning the actions accomplished by means of language. Then it became an independent academic disci pline more exclusively focused on the cognitive effects of the use of language in context. The focus is thus gone from an -quite revolutionary- examination of the capacities language may have to modify states of affairs, to the mere analysis of the content it may convey in context. To conclude, we argue that this evolution took place after sacrificing the consideration of what the language does, which is probably a conceptual loss for the study of language.