Prof Robyn Carston

Research summary

My research focuses on pragmatics and on its interfaces with semantics (linguistic meaning) and with other cognitive systems, in particular, the 'theory of mind' system. The pragmatic account that I mostly work with has been developed within Relevance Theory, a framework which incorporates many of the key insights of Grice's philosophically-based pragmatics, while also being responsive to the findings of current empirical research within cognitive science (on language comprehension processes, evolutionary psychology, children's communicative development, cognitive architecture). Much of my past work has been an attempt to understand the extent to which what we communicate by uttering a sentence is determinable from the linguistic meaning of the sentence. In my view, context-sensitive pragmatic processes play an essential role in the recovery of a speaker's intended meaning, not only in inferring the implicatures of an utterance, but also in driving its explicitly communicated content. My two main current projects are: (a) Pragmatic routes to the understanding of metaphor and related non-literal uses of language; (b)  The nature of lexical meaning and its relation to the concepts we express or communicate.

Teaching summary

I currently teach the module 'Issues in Pragmatics', and coordinate and teach on the MA Linguistics with specialization in Pragmatics.

Education

University College London

PhD, Linguistics | 1986

University College London

MA, Phonetics and Linguistics | 1980

Victoria University of Wellington

BA Hons, Linguistics | 1976

University of Canterbury

BA, English Literature | 1975

Publications