Framework Of Relevance Theory Research Articles

A pragmatics-cognitive approach to the opposition relations lexicalized in Chinese

Abstract Contrast, adversative and corrective can all be represented by er in Classical Chinese, but they are lexicalized respectively by er, danshi and ershi in Modern Chinese. The two lexicalization systems suggest that the opposition relations have commonalities as well as differences. In the framework of relevance theory and ‘three domains’, this study argues that the three opposition relations are in different cognitive domains, at different representational levels, and trigger different inferences, which accounts for their diverse lexicalizations in Modern Chinese. The opposition relations also have cognitive or metaphorical connections with each other, which justifies their unified actualization in Classical Chinese. The pragmatics-cognitive framework could also account for interlinguistic data.

Study on the Translation of Verbal Humor in Bridget Jones’s Diary from the Perspective of Relevance Theory

Humor is a common phenomenon in daily life. Essentially, it is a special form of verbal communication. Since humor bears special language and cultural characteristics, the difficulty of translation is self-evident for translators. For many years, the translatability and untranslatability of humor have been the focus of the argument among scholars. Relevance theory attempts to explain the mechanism of humor generation and its translation from the perspective of cognition. Under the framework of relevance theory, this paper takes Bridget Jones's Diary and its Chinese version as the research object to explore the translation strategies of verbal humor, and evaluate whether the Chinese translation can represent the same humorous effect as the original. The results show that the translator adopts direct and indirect translation strategies when translating verbal humor, and the translation strategies have effectively achieved the same humorous effect as the original to some extent if the target language readers share the similar cognitive environment with the source language readers in some situations. Nevertheless, the humorous effects may not be fully conveyed in the target texts, especially when translating culturally loaded words and idiomatic expressions. In such cases, the author puts forward some tentative suggestions for improving the translated texts. The study makes an attempt to provide a feasibility analysis for the studies on translation of verbal humor in diary novels.

The ‘Loose Use’ of Figurative Language in Pakistani TEDx Talks A Perspective of Relevance Theory

The current study utilised a qualitative approach to implement thematic analysis of the ‘loose use’ of figurative language in TEDx Talks, focusing on irony, hyperbole, and metaphor, within the framework of Relevance Theory by Wilson and Sperber, which states that the successful interpretation of figurative language depends on its own optimal relevance to the context. Two speeches from TEDx Pakistan, delivered in English, serve as the data sources. This qualitative study attempts to identify whether figurative utterances used in public speaking facilitate an appropriate interpretation of ideas. The study found that metaphor, hyperbole, and irony enhance communication without complicating interpretation. Metaphors connect details to the main message, hyperboles convey emotions vividly, and irony, when used appropriately, maintains meaningful communication. Also, strong implicatures are communicated instantly based on context and speaker attitude. This research suggests that mindful use of figurative language can empower public speakers to connect with audiences more deeply, paving the way for more impactful and memorable communication. There is a wide scope for future research in the public discourse of Pakistani English.

THE PRAGMATIC ASPECTS OF LINGUISTIC NEGATION

This paper is an attempt to give a general explanation of pragmatics of linguistic negation. After a brief survey of classical accounts of negation pragmatic theories (as speech act theory, argumentation theory and polyphony) the main pragmatic uses of negation (illocutionary negation, external negation and majoring negation) are discussed within relevance theory. The question of relevance of negative utterances is raised, and a general inferential schema (based on so-called invited interference) is proposed and tested for the main uses which are discussed in the paper. The analysis proposed in the framework of relevance theory has thus been verified by the main uses of negation. It has the advantage of not making any morphologic or semantic distinctions between the different types of negation and the different uses are explained from different pragmatic processes depending either on the linguistic environment, or on the context, or on both.
 The analysis is both simple and realistic. Simple because no complexification of the linguistic system is necessary. Linguistic negation treatment allows, on that count, interesting confrontations from one language to another. Realistic too, because it comes from the principle, admitted by psycholinguists, that positive information is more quickly treated than negative information. It follows from this principle that pragmatic inferences on negative utterances resort to positive premises.

The Polish Complementiser 'jakoby': a relevance theoretic account


 This paper analyses the Polish complementiser jakoby within the framework of relevance theory. It suggests that those environments in which jakoby is licensed, namely certain indirect-speech-type constructions and clauses embedded under inherently negative predicates, such as zaprzeczyć (“to deny”) and nieprawdą jest (“it is untrue”), have in common that they can be conceived of in metarepresentational terms. Furthermore, it argues that jakoby encodes procedural meaning which restricts it principally to these types of environment. Unlike że (“that”), which can always be substituted for it, jakoby constrains the range of attitudes towards the embedded proposition that can be implied contextually, blocking interpretations on which this proposition is understood to be endorsed, while encouraging the recovery of evaluative stances such as scepticism, doubt and rejection. We show that jakoby can be selected from the point of view of the reporting voice, in which case it receives a global interpretation, or that of the matrix subject; this yields a local interpretation.

Examining interlanguage pragmatics from a relevance-theoretic perspective: Challenges in L2 production

AbstractThis paper explores three pragmatic challenges that learners of Japanese as L2 encountered during their study abroad programs and work placements in Japan. These challenges are examined within the framework of Relevance Theory. Research on interlanguage pragmatics of L2 Japanese is limited in scope, as studies mostly focus on speech acts and other sociolinguistic and interactional strategies. As a result, researchers have yet to formally establish how learners of Japanese have difficulties in regard to their production of meaning. This study draws on open-ended questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions to determine the pragmatic competence of L2 students across two Irish universities. The study demonstrates that learners have difficulties with processing both linguistic encoding and phenomena that involve inference. That is, learners’ inability to activate their pragmatic competence hinders their ability to produce communicative acts. Findings lend support to the need to enhance pragmatic competence among L2 learners through specific cognitive processes. This paper also contributes to the need for interlanguage pragmatics to be pursued in conjunction with current developments in Relevance Theory. It is argued that ideas developed within Relevance Theory can be particularly beneficial to the teaching and learning of pragmatic competence in the L2 classroom.

Relevance theory perspective in translating media implicit meaning from English into Arabic

This research focuses on translating implicit meaning conveyed through media news reports within the framework of relevance theory. Relevance theory focuses on a core concept which dictates that speakers and listeners are interested and pay more attention to information that are relevant to their basic beliefs, thoughts, ideas, etc. in other words, a message will be optimally relevant if it is closely related to the audience points of interest, inclinations, preferences, etc. Implicit meaning is the meaning intended by the speaker when making an utterance. Therefore, implicit meaning shows the difference between what is said and what is meant. The significance of this study stems from the fact that misunderstanding might sometimes occur in communication process particularly when the hearer does not understand the meaning intended by the speaker. In order to convey the implicit meaning properly, translators should render this intended meaning accurately, thus hearers would be able to easily comprehend the targeted meaning.

A Study of Discourse Markers Employed in College English Writing by Non-English Majors

Discourse marker is a common language phenomenon in verbal communication including parts of conjunctions, adverbs, interjections, some phrases and small words. From the perspective of grammar, these modifiers do not have many a semantic meanings and they are less related to the sentences. However, from the perspective of pragmatics and discourse, discourse marker plays the role of organizing the discourse, attracting the hearer’s attention, and expressing the emotion and attitude of the speaker. In the process of utterance generation and understanding, discourse marker works as a signal or makes the information clear so that the hearer can obtain the communicative intention of the speaker easily, thus producing the contextual effect. Based on the framework of Relevance Theory by Sperber and Wilson, this essay adopts Fraser’s classification of discourse markers, analyzing the use of discourse markers by non-English majors in Guangxi region. The result of this research shows that discourse markers indeed play a crucial role in the process of utterance generation and understanding, and the correct use of discourse markers contributes to the cohesion of discourse or text and the improvement of the student’s writing ability.

Prosódia, relevância e manipulação no discurso político

Abstract The aim of this paper is to examine the role of intonation in political discourse in River Plate Spanish as a means to manipulate audiences into accepting questionable assumptions. The analysis of intonation is carried out in the Autosegmental-Metrical model applied to Argentinian Spanish and its interpretation is made in the framework of Relevance Theory. Some extracts from three interviews of two politicians and a presidential address are analysed, using PRAAT (BOERSMA; WEENINCK, 2020), a software for speech analysis, and interpreted using the Sp_ToBI transcription system. The analysis shows that level and rising intonation, often associated with background information, can be used to indicate, together with other linguistic devices, that information is to be processed as forming part of the common ground shared with the audience, and thus beyond questioning. In this way, information favourable to the speaker is made more accessible and attention is diverted from critical information.

How Is Construction Land Transition Related to Rural Transformation? Evidence from a Plain County in China Based on the Grey Correlation Model

Under the background of urban-rural integration, the frequent flow of urban and rural elements has promoted the close connection between rural transformation (RT) and construction land transition (CLT). How is CLT related to RT? By taking the plain area Linqing County in China as the study area, basing the study on the RT and CLT coupling framework of relevance theory, building an RT and CLT evaluation index system, using the multi-factor evaluation method for the evaluation of RT and CLT from 2010 to 2018, and using the grey correlation model to measure the RT and CLT coupling relationship, the results showed that the level of RT was from 0.04 to 97.42, and the level of CLT was from 14.89 to 82.47, showing the trends of gradual increase and fluctuating increase, respectively. Taking 2013 and 2016 as the time point, RT could be divided into the initial stage, growth stage I, and growth stage II, corresponding to the initial stage, high growth stage, and stable development stage of CLT. The coupling degree between the two was in the range of 0.6–0.8 and was in the stage of a medium to high coupling degree. The correlation degree between the subsystem of RT and CLT was over 0.65. In the subsystem of CLT, the correlation degrees between quantitative structure transition and RT and efficiency transition and RT were both lower than 0.65, which were relatively low. Controlling the scale of construction land and taking efficiency transition are the effective methods to guide the deep exploration of potential and are the inevitable way to strengthen the relationship between CLT and RT and promote urban-rural integration development.

Analysis of Advertisements by Yus’ Verbal-Visual Model

Francisco Yus proposed a verbal-visual (VV) model for analyzing media discourse based on Relevance Theory in 1997. This paper gives an introduction to Yus’ VV model and then applies the model to analyze three advertisements with the VV model’s four parameters of communication: exchange, message, intentionality, and efficiency. Yus’ VV model successfully captures all possible interpretive categories of the selected advertisements. The study finds that the first selected ad has one communication layer—spectator-oriented communication—and is intentionally conveyed non-verbally to readers. The second ad has two communication layers—character-oriented and spectator-oriented communication. The author intentionally conveys the message to readers both verbally and non-verbally. The last ad has one communication layer—spectator-oriented communication. The author intentionally uses non-verbal communication with the readers. For all three ads, the reader may have maximal or minimal interpretive efficiency based on individual differences. This study analyzes advertisements at different levels of communication from a cognitive perspective. Currently, few studies do so. And this study provides a reference for the analysis of media discourse under the framework of relevance theory.

Are you talking to me? A case of specific reply by means of election campaign advertisements

The article aims at an analytic description of a specific type of exchange occurring during political campaigns. The candidates often engage in a virtual dialogue; that is, an exchange of points made by means of campaign advertisements. The specific type of exchange or reply is, in certain aspects, no different to an ordinary conversation. However, what influences it most is the context of public/mass communication. The main concern of the presentation is to investigate, within the framework of Relevance Theory, ways in which a candidate’s reply to the opponent’s advertisement is actually a message to the viewers and prospective voters rather than to the rival themselves. The analysis is carried out on selected advertisements for Mitt Romney and Barack Obama broadcast during the U.S. presidential election campaign in 2012.

Relevance-Based Approach to Translation of Contemporary Popular Science Texts

In the present paper, the authors analyze a translation process implemented within the framework of Relevance Theory using Adaptation Theory as a tool to ensure relevance in the translation of popular science texts. The paper is part of ongoing research dedicated to the development of methodology for translation of popular science texts on architecture, ICT, and economics, focused here on translating from English into Latvian. Recognizing that relevance in translation is a qualitative category, the authors suggest measuring it along two dimensions: the plane of content and the plane of expression. Having defined four categories of relevance, the authors have developed a grid that may be recommended as a guide in a translator’s decision-making process for selecting a particular adaptive strategy and translation method.

A RELEVANCE-THEORETIC ANALYSIS OF YEAH AS A DISCOURSE MARKER

The paper attempts to explain English native speakers’ use of the discourse marker yeah from a relevance-theoretic perspective (Sperber & Wilson, 1995). As a discourse marker, yeah normally functions as a continuer, an agreement marker, a turn-taking marker, or a disfluency marker. However, according to Relevance Theory, yeah can also be considered a procedural expression, and therefore, is expected to help yield necessary constraints on the contexts, which facilitates understanding in human communication by encoding one of the three contextual effects (contextual implication, strengthening, or contradiction) or reorienting the audience to certain assumptions which lead to the intended interpretation. Analyses of examples taken from conversations with a native speaker of English suggest that each use of yeah as a discourse marker is able to put a certain type of constraints on the relevance of the accompanying utterance. These initial analyses serve as a foundation for further research to confirm its multi-functionality as a procedural expression when examined within the framework of Relevance Theory.

Pragmatics and figurative language in individuals with traumatic brain injury: fine-grained assessment and relevance-theoretic considerations

ABSTRACT Background Difficulties in the pragmatic aspects of language are considered a hallmark of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). However, this claim is mostly based on assessments of discourse production, neglecting another relevant pragmatic aspect, namely the comprehension of figurative expressions such as idioms, metaphors, and proverbs. Accounts developed in the framework of Relevance Theory might help framing an investigation in this domain, by describing a continuum of loose uses for idioms and metaphors and the echoing of general wisdom in proverbs. Aims First, we aimed at sketching a detailed pragmatic profile of individuals with TBI, by using the Assessment of Pragmatic Abilities and Cognitive Substrates (APACS) test, a standardized tool evaluating both production and comprehension. Second, we aimed at doing a fine-grained investigation of figurative language comprehension skills, by taking into account different figurative types and task-related issues. Methods and Procedures Thirty-nine individuals with TBI were administered the APACS test and compared to a sample of matched controls. Six subtasks considering three figurative types (idioms, metaphors, and proverbs) in two response-formats (multiple-choice and verbal explanation) were derived from the APACS test and analyzed with a mixed model approach. Outcomes and Results Results showed a diffuse pragmatic language disorder both in the expressive and receptive modality, with 56% of individuals with TBI performing below normative cut-off in the APACS Total score. The analysis of the figurative language subtasks confirmed the difficulties of the TBI group with figurative expressions compared to controls. A further model restricted to the TBI group showed that verbal explanation was more difficult than the multiple-choice format. However, we did not observe robust differences between figurative types. The only noticeable effect was related to proverbs in the verbal explanation format, which were more difficult than all other subtasks. Conclusions This study shows two main aspects. First, the pragmatic language disorder of people with TBI encompasses not only the well-known difficulties in discourse production but also a disruption of figurative language understanding. Second, such a disruption affects different figurative types, indicating a general problem in inferring the speaker’s meaning from non-literal language. Relevance-theoretic considerations helped us highlighting the commonalities across figurative types, rather than the differences, and the enhanced meta-representational efforts linked to proverbs in open response formats. Intervention could capitalize on these findings and implement training programs that target pragmatic inferences across different types of expressions to promote the most successful return to communication in its variety of situations.

What’s really going on with the ham sandwich?

Abstract Working within the framework of Relevance Theory, I investigate the nature of referential metonymy (specifically, metonymically-used definite descriptions), aiming to elucidate (i) the pragmatic mechanisms involved in referential metonymy comprehension, and (ii) the contribution of a metonymically-used definite description to the explicitly communicated content of an utterance. I propose that, while the interpretation of referential metonymy is properly inferential in nature, it cannot be explained in terms of ‘meaning modulation’ (narrowing and broadening); rather, the literal meaning of a metonymically-used referring expression remains intact, and is used as evidence of the speaker’s target referent. In addition, I argue that the referential/attributive distinction proposed by Donnellan (1966) for literally-used definite descriptions also applies to metonymically-used definite descriptions. Thus, the contribution of a metonymically-used definite description to explicit utterance content differs according to whether the definite description is used ‘referentially’ or ‘attributively’.

A Pragmatic Analysis of Discourse Connectives in the Framework of Relevance Theory

A Pragmatic Analysis of Discourse Connectives in the Framework of Relevance Theory

Metarepresentation and echo in online automobile advertising

The aim of this paper is to shed some light on the rhetorical import of echoing fashion in online automobile advertising within the framework of Relevance Theory. The study embraces the concepts of metarepresentation and echo and expands them beyond traditional relevance-theoretic limits (e.g., the analysis of irony, free indirect reporting or metalinguistic negation) to show how they can successfully explain that design-related passages of car advertising will achieve relevance via the addressee recognising the allusive nature of the ads, attributing them to some source and identifying the addresser's attitude towards them. Endorsing the view that advertising exemplifies covert communication, it is expected that linguistic metarepresentations will not be fully explicit but rather be left to the reader to infer.

Productivity and Lexical Pragmatic Features in a Contemporary CAT Environment: An Exploratory Study in English to Japanese

As the translation profession has become more technologized, translators increasingly work within an interface that combines translation from scratch, translation memory suggestions, machine translation post-editing, and terminological resources. This study analyses user activity data from one such interface, and measures temporal effort for English to Japanese translation at the segment level. Using previous studies of translation within the framework of relevance theory as a starting point, various features and edits were identified and annotated within the texts, in order to find whether there was a relationship between their prevalence and translation effort. Although this study is exploratory in nature, there was an expectation based on previous studies that procedurally encoded utterances would be associated with greater translation effort. This expectation was complicated by the choice of a language pair in which there has been little research applying relevance theory to translation, and by contemporary research that has made the distinction between procedural and conceptual encoding appear more fluid than previously believed. Our findings are that some features that lean more towards procedural encoding (such as prevalence of pronouns and manual addition of postpositions) are associated with increased temporal effort, although the small sample size makes it impossible to generalise. Segments translated with the aid of translation memory showed the least average temporal effort, and segments translated using machine translation appeared to require more effort than translation from scratch.

The English Possessive Marker in a Framework of Relevance

English nominals constructed with the morpheme {-s} as a so-called possessive marker may be assigned an indefinitely large number of interpretations depending on the context of utterance. This raises interesting questions concerning the interface between semantics and pragmatics, most obviously concerning the more specific nature of the contextually invariable encoded content of the morpheme as well as the contribution made by that content to the process of comprehension. This article aims briefly to suggest one solution to these problems by proposing an underdetermined procedural semantics feeding into a principled cognitive process of inference as proposed within the framework of relevance theory.