Political language gaffes and the importance of Hearer’s meaning

Abstract

Drawing on Hansen and Terkourafi’s (2023) model of Hearer’s meaning, the paper discusses cognitive mechanisms through which hearers interpret political language gaffes (e.g. former U.S. President Trump’s “Despite the constant negative press covfefe”). The paper approaches political language gaffes as dependent on a high degree of blending between textual-and-discursive frames and social-world frames. The dataset analysis demonstrates how a Hearer’s difficulty in interpreting a gaffe-y utterance can shift Hearer’s focus (a) from one frame element (e.g. speaker, hearer, effect of utterance on hearer) to another, and (b) from a discursive frame to a social-world frame. The paper demonstrates how, while looking to pinpoint the contextual relevance of an utterance, a Hearer can simultaneously shift focus and vary the scope of cognitive structures from which Hearer can derive meaning. The paper also suggests how analyses of political language gaffes can contribute to research on sociopragmatic topics such as Speaker’s accountability, pragmatic competence, pragmatic failure, non-propositional effects, etc.