Possible Implied Meanings in Prince Philip’s Most Quoted ‘Gaffes’. Are we (mis)led by their online Romanian version?
Possible Implied Meanings in Prince Philip’s Most Quoted ‘Gaffes’. Are we (mis)led by their online Romanian version?

Summary/Abstract: This paper is intended as a pragmatic analysis of the online Romanian version of Prince Philip’s most quoted ‘gaffes’ in point of their possible implied meanings. Once Prince Philip’s death was announced, media networks and news sites chose to remind their readers of some of his best-known ‘gaffes’ by posting a selection of them on their websites. Our hypothesis is that by simply defining them as gaffes and using the term in their headlines, the media, as addressers, discouraged the readers from calculating any pragmatic inferences, the intention of the media being to obtain a confirmation bias reaction. Moreover, the readers of the Romanian version of the replies (posted on hotnews.ro) were expected to react assuming a common ground, based on their thinking clichés regarding the concept of political correctness, the cultural backgrounds of Prince Philip’s interlocutors and, last but not least, the psychological and communicative profile of Prince Philip as the speaking source. Any inadequacy or error in the translation of the replies would only add to possible misinterpretations. Even if the intentions of a speaker are not entirely known, the immediate situational context cannot be neglected when calculating them, unless the source itself intentionally gives their replies (apparent) autonomy from that narrow context, seemingly to encourage their taking at face value, or, on the contrary, multiple interpretations.

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