On prolepsis and its fates

Jorge F. Larreamendy-Joerns (larream+ who-is-at pitt.edu)
Wed, 24 Jan 1996 23:18:32 -0500 (EST)

D Judy,

I just read your comments on some of my ideas concerning the distinction
between prolepsis and conversational implicatures, and I think that you
hit right on target. Basically, I believe that there are two ways in which
we can conceptualize prolepsis. First, we can look at it as a way to refer
to the process by which meanings are implied or presupposed AS IF they
were previously shared, when indeed they are not. This, as Judy aptly
indicates, has the effect (when everything goes right) of legitimizing the
listener as a member of a given community, even before he/she actually
develops the relevant capabilities. The example of the caregivers
attributing meaning to children's babbling is very appropriate. AT this
level, prolepsis constitutes a mechanism of enculturation by
"anticipation". There is a long tradition in Continental philosophy, that
dates back to Hegel's passage on the Master and the Slave (in the
Phenomenology of the Spirit), according to which identity, for example,
originates through a process that mirrors prolepsis. Jacques Lacan, the
French psychoanalyst, for instance, claims that identity, defined as a
place in a symbolic order or family genealogy, is attributed through
discourse to infants (by means of cultural rituals such as baptism and
the forth) even before they forge by themselves they place in a society
or family structure. In this sense, the meaning of prolepsis is close to
one of the definitions that is provided in the American Heritage
Dictionary: "The anachronistic representation of something as existing
before its proper or historical time" (I have personal reserves
concerning the word anachronistic, though).
Now, if we explore how prolepsis works at a more minute
discursive level, for instance examining how it might work in a classroom
situation, things get a little bit fuzzy. If a teacher, for example,
produces a proleptic utterance, several things can happen, depending on
whether the students can actually follow the presuppositions that are
taken for granted. The utterance can be provocative to students so that
they unpack the meaning by drawing the necessary inferences (something
that depends greatly on their knowledge base and other supporting means).
In this case, the prolepsis can be said, from an instructional
perspective, well-crafted. On the other hand, the utterance can go well
beyond the cognitive and, generally, semiotic means of the students, in
which case what was meant to be an "initiation" becomes what I called in
my review a failed conversational implicature (NB: Actually, Stone
classifies prolepsis into the family of conversational implicatures).
This occurs quite frequently and is just one fate of misunderstandings in
communication. From the teacher's perspective, the use of prolepsis is in
that sense a delicate operation in which he/she ought to take the
novice's perspective into consideration. It is is this sense that I
invoked the notion of intentionality, which I admit may be more
problematic than any thing else.
On the other hand, in my review, I pointed out the "inverse
process". That is, how prolepsis are used by novices when they presuppose
information that is not presupposed by the relative expert (for reasons
that span from mere ignorance to instructional strategies, as when a
teacher "refuses" to go along with the implicitness of students'
explanations). In this case, the distinction, purely operational or
empirical if you want, between prolepsis and failed implicatures is
critical. This may not be exactly the right distinction, I admit.
However, it points to the problem of differentiating times when the
speaker (i.e., the one who produces the proleptic utterance) is "in
control" of the rhetorical strategies being used, from times when,
again, unwarranted assumptions are made about what the listener can
reconstruct or is willing to reconstruct by himself.
I have the feeling that a productive analysis of the contribution
of prolepsis to development or learning ought to be rooted in a serious
consideration of how it works in actual discourse. Otherwise, Stone's
proposal about unpacking the semiotic mechanisms by which scaffolding
takes place could be reduced to the adoption of yet another very global,
though very suggestive, metaphor. This time, prolepsis.
Well, I stop here hoping that my argument was not too proleptic!

Jorge F. Larreamendy-Joerns
University of Pittsburgh
E-mail: larream who-is-at pitt.edu