On adhesions and critiques to the rational model of language user in pragmatics: the appeal to psychoanalysis

Abstract

This paper revisits the notion of user in both Anglo-American and Continental Pragmatics. We delineate some of the assumptions under the idea of rational user, as philosophers such as Paul Grice and John Searle have proposed it, in addition to other premises within the critique to this model, as pragmaticists in Continental, discursive or Brazilian traditions undertake it. We’ve identifi ed historically that in the fi rst decades of linguistic pragmatics (1980 and 90), continental pragmatics did frequently resort to psychoanalysis in deconstructing the rational user – a type of dialogue that would become less and less prominent in the decades to come. We suggest that the possible reason for such a refusal lies in a misinterpretation of psychoanalysis as a theory of the individual versus pragmatics as a theory of society. We then gesture at the urgency of the dialogue between pragmatics and psychoanalysis, for both fi elds have shared a vigorous critique to the intentional individual