Prof Siobhan Chapman

I work in pragmatics, the branch of linguistics concerned with the relationships between language and the contexts in which it is used. I am interested in the interfaces between pragmatics and other academic disciplines, particularly philosophy of language and literary stylistics. In my work at the first interface I explore links between mid-twentieth century philosophy in the analytic tradition and the ways in which related themes and similar data are discussed in present-day pragmatics. In my work at the second interface I am interested in the possibilities and relative merits of various different frameworks developed within modern pragmatics in relation to a variety of literary genres. I concentrate in particular on possible applications of pragmatic theories in the Gricean and neo-Gricean tradition to readings of prose fiction.

My Office Hour is Thursday 1p.m.-2p.m.

• Implicature and style in George Moore's "The Lake" (Invitation to Speak, Collaborative Research Centre, Eberhard Karls University Tuebingen, Germany 2016)
• "The book has begun to read very agreeably": The pragmatics of literary rewriting (Keynote Speech, Poetics and Linguistics Association 2015)
• Pragmatics as an approach to textual revision (Invitation to Speak, University of Kent 2014)
• Susan Stebbing: Logic, Language and Ideology (Invitation to Speak, University of Sheffield 2014)
• "Through that baize door": Consciousness and the narrative of otherness in Moore's 'Esther Waters' (Keynote Speech, Embodiments, University of Liverpool 2013)
• Pragmatics and Meaning (Keynote Speech, Savoirs, Textes, Langage, University of Lille 3, France 2013)
• 'George Moore's revisions of Ether Waters: A neo-Gricean reading' (Keynote Speech, International Poetics and Linguistics Association and French Societe de Stylistique Anglaise 2012)
• 'Implicature in narative fiction: A neo-Gricean approach to Literary pragmatics' (Keynote Speech, University of Sussex 2012)
• 'Unempirical dogmas': The responses to logical positivism of Arne Naess and J. L. Austin (Keynote Speech, University of Oslo 2010)
• Arne Naess and Empirical Semantics (Keynote Speech, Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature, University of Oslo 2009)
• Whereof one cannot speak: philosophical asides on literature (Keynote Speech, Poetics and Linguistics Association 2007)
• Outside the Vienna Circle: Arne Naess's Philosophy of Language (Invitation to Speak, Stapledon Philosophy Colloquium 2006)
• Pragmatics and Literature (Invitation to Speak, International Workshop on Semantics, Pragmatics and Rhetoric 2005)