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On the pragmatic motivation in wrtitten Czech

Publication at Faculty of Education |
2011

Abstract

The article shows that certain phenomena regulated by the rules of Czech orthography, namely by rules regulating the use of letters and quotations marks, are in fact pragmatic. The usage of capital letters points to cases of individual reference (proper names as a means of identification) or it reflects a honorific function (including occasional overlapping with the aforementioned function).

The use of quotation marks is shown as an instrument of the author's communicative strategy involving particular conversational implicatures (pragmatic intrusion - irony, reinterpretation, semantic shifts). It reflects stronger authorial commitment to implicature than analogical strategies occurring in spoken communication.