Lexemes, practs, and those who have yet to decide

Abstract

Mey’s (2001) action-theoretic societal pragmatics known as pragmatic act theory nurtures the idea that the explanatory movement in pragmatic theories should go from the outside in (i. e. from actual situational contexts into prior contexts encoded in the utterances used). Kecskes’s (2010, 2013) socio-cognitive approach challenges Mey’s position, and argues that the explan-atory movement should go in both directions: from the outside in and from the inside out. To challenge Mey’s view and to nurture his own position, Kecskes resorts to a dialectical socio-cognitive perspective on human communication (Kecskes 2003, 2008), and uses situation-bound utterances as evidence to support his theory. In this paper, I will provide an overview of both theories and argue in favor of Mey’s position.