Doug Jones: language Evolution: "People don���t just comm...

Doug Jones: language Evolution: "People don���t just communicate by encoding and decoding literal meanings, but by inferring one another���s communicative intentions, always thinking 'I wonder what he meant by that'. There���s a whole branch of linguistics, linguistic pragmatics, that studies how this works. And pragmatic inference in language is just one instance of a special, powerful human aptitude for creating shared intentions. This aptitude means that there are always ways to subvert official speech, in any language, even Ascian or Newspeak. Or Korean: the news several years ago was that North Korea had banned sarcasm:��Officials told people that sarcastic expressions such as ���This is all America���s fault��� would constitute unacceptable criticism of the regime��...

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