The Affective Demonstrative Use and R-Implicature

It has previously been observed that affective demonstratives generate special effects such as the familiarity sentiment and the evaluative overtone. This paper claims that those effects are R-implicatures, which are derived through flouting the R principle. This view rejects the possible account that would like to impose a special cognitive level on affective demonstratives. In other words, this paper argues that there is no cognitive scale specialized for affective demonstratives but that the effects of affective demonstratives come by choosing the referring form which is stronger than the situation requires. In explaining the affective use of demonstratives, this paper notes that the affective use can be distinguished from other types of demonstratives which do not necessarily evoke special effects. Thus, we suggest that the claim of this paper does not result in entirely removing the referential status in the Givenness Hierarchy.