English Reflexive Anaphora: A Pragmatic and Discourse-Based Approach

Abstract

Pragmatics is of great importance in the study of linguistics, especially when it comes to interpreting language within a specific context. This article looks at reflexive anaphora in English from a pragmatic and discourse point of view, focusing on the way in which context helps in determining the antecedent of a reflexive pronoun. The primary aim of the study is to examine how pragmatic and discourse factors can contribute to the interpretation of reflexive pronouns in cases where the syntactic constraints do not offer a clear interpretation. The study is both theoretical and based on empirical evidence, and it makes use of the relevant scientific literature concerning English reflexive anaphora, pragmatics, and the connection between syntactic and discourse principles in the interpretation of reflexives. The empirical section of the study is based on a small experiment in which 25 English teachers were asked to identify the antecedents of reflexive pronouns under various contextual conditions. The results show a high degree of consistency in the participants' choices of antecedent across the majority of the test items. However, the variation in responses increased in the case of a construction that had several possible antecedents, since 40% of the participants altered their choice of antecedent after the contextual information had been given. The statistical analysis did not reveal a significant overall effect of context, but the results do suggest that contextual and discourse information may become more important when the syntactic structure allows for more than one possible interpretation. The theoretical analysis also shows that features such as logophoricity, emphasis, contrastiveness, and discourse prominence can play a role in the interpretation of reflexives. On the basis of these findings and the theoretical insights obtained, the paper puts forward an integrative syntactic-discourse approach which treats syntactic and discourse-pragmatic information as interacting sources during interpretation. The study concludes that English reflexive anaphora should not be seen merely as a syntactic phenomenon and that a more complete explanation must take into account the interaction between syntactic structure, pragmatics, and discourse context.