Three decades of relevance theory

Abstract

Almost three decades have elapsed since the publication of Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson's (1986) seminal and most influential book Relevance. Communication and Cognition, and exactly two since the publication of its second edition (Sperber and Wilson 1995). In them, the authors presented and revised a series of claims and principles about human verbal communication and the foundational postulates of what is now known as 'relevance theory'. Over all these years, their two books and numerous subsequent publications have given rise to a strand of research in pragmatics with a psychological basis and cognitive orientation. Often alluded to as 'relevance-theoretic pragmatics', this strand seeks to unravel how the mind processes utterances -and, more widely, discourse-the contribution of diverse linguistic elements (e.g., discourse markers, particles, adverbials, intonation, etc.) to comprehension, why the mind arrives at a particular interpretation and the effects that may follow from understanding utterances in one way or another.Relevance theory has certainly awoken the interest of many pragmatists and linguists in general by posing many intriguing problems and thought-provoking questions. Relevance theorists' continuous challenging of often-taken-for-granted assumptions, claims, generalisations, and even whole models, has also brought fresher air to those disciplines. Indeed, they have analysed in depth a wide variety of linguistic and communicative phenomena from a different perspective and with a new theoretical apparatus, which has shed much light onto underexplored or overlooked issues.This book celebrates these happiest anniversaries and, most importantly, the fact that relevance theory still continues to appeal to researchers, who find in it a very valuable model for understanding the intricacies of linguistic communication. This is a collection of papers, which very sincerely acknowledges the extensive work carried out not only by the authors of the theory themselves, but also by a large number of researchers who have elaborated on some of its postulates and distinctions, empirically tested some of its predictions or applied the theory to diverse domains or neighbouring fields, thus expanding its scope. Consequently, a tribute of deepest gratitude is paid to all of them for their brave efforts to answer questions related to an incredibly complex human activity.Ten papers are collected here. Five of them elaborate on issues that have traditionally concerned practitioners in relevance theory: the intentional nature of communication, how speakers guide hearers to recover intended meaning, how specific types of utterances or linguistic elements are interpreted, or the consequences of communication. Two papers apply the relevance-theoretic apparatus to account for features of some linguistic varieties or languages, thus helping to understand how they are structured and function. The remaining three papers present recent developments and further applications of the theory, as they consider epistemic vigilance m...

Relevance-Theoretic Comprehension procedures in the analysis of Donald Trump''''s interview on HBO.

“…d.Due to the virus, America shut its borders with Europe. The audience should share the mentioned assumptions in (16) to arrive at the intended meaning of Trump's response; consequently, the implicated conclusion is deducible from the explicature in (15) and the contextual assumptions in (16a-d), which results in the implicated conclusion in (17) Jonathan Swan: You think they're faking their statistics, South Korea? An advanced country?…”